The Canadian Stocks

The Canadian stocks:

During the 1980's and 90's, the strong dollar, government bonds and financial markets of the U.S. were favored. Not so at this point. Now it's Canada's turn. In building an international portfolio, I would invest 4% to a maximum 5% of my holdings among the S&P/TSX 60 list of high-quality Canadian securities.  With a rising Canadian dollar (versus U.S. dollar) and enormous natural resources base, Canada is very likely going to outperform the U.S. in the context of a growing global economy " in the years ahead -- as it did in the 1970's.

The S&P/TSX 60, which offers exposure to 60 large, liquid Canadian companies, is the large cap index for Canada and represents the Canadian component of the S&P Global 1200. It is market cap weighted and balanced across 10 GICS economic sectors.  In Canada, the iUnit or exchange traded fund (ETF), from Barclays Global Investors, trading with the ticker symbol XIU on the Toronto exchange, allows an investor to buy the S&P/TSX60 index via the TSX-listed XIU.

If American securities traders wanted to hedge their dollars, they would buy the XIU on the Toronto exchange, rather than the AMEX ETF Canadian market tracker that trades in USD under the ticker symbol EWC.
With either XIU or EWC, your portfolio would be diversified across all economic sectors of Canada.  Like any ETF, you can buy or sell EWC (the S&P/TSX60) in seconds and there is no switching fees, nor front- or back-end loads or trailer fees, and the built-in management costs are minimal.

Some of the best of the Canadian corporations are in their base metals and oil & gas industries and of course there are the five big Canadian banks, and a couple large insurance companies in the financial sector.
Because they are dually-listed, you can find many leading Canadian stocks on the NYSE.  A few of the best-known NYSE-traded Canadian stocks are Alcan (AL), Inco (N), CIBC (BCM), RBC (RY), Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD), Nortel (NT), Thomson Corp (TOC) and Sun Life Financial (SLF). Others are Research In Motion (RIMM) and several top-quality energy corporations, particularly in the Western Canada oil sands.

The Toronto exchange trading in Canadian dollars for these stocks is at:
AL
N
BCM
RY
TD
NT
TOC
SLF
RIM

As Toronto in recent years has become the mining finance capital of the world, rivalling London, you will find most of the gold producers and exploration companies listed on the Toronto Exchange. Many of these are also listed on the AMEX or the NYSE, such as Barrick (ABX).  You can also electronically trade Canadian stocks directly in Canada (as you can U.S., U.K., German and Swiss-listed stocks on their exchanges) via Interactive Brokers.

If you take typically hold large positions, be aware that beyond the list of S&P/TSX stocks, and a few others, most Canadian stocks are thinly traded.