So the economy didn't collapse...let's look at some investments.

More stock analysis.

Stock	Pro	Con	Other
TD (A Canadian bank)	During the financial collapse, Canadian banks largely eschewed highly risky sub-prime foolishness. This bodes well for stability.	We are already heavy in financials. It doesn’t help balance the portfolio.
VMC (Vulcan Materials Company--they make construction materials, or perhaps don’t tell many jokes)	In March 2007, Vulcan announced that it had been named to Fortune Magazine's list of Most Admired Companies for the sixth time. The company was ranked first in its industry sector, "Building Materials, Glass." Overall, Vulcan ranked among the top 10 companies in the Fortune 1000 for both long-term investment andsocial responsibility. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_Materials_Company)	Doesn’t really help with portfolio balance.
AWF	Huge dividend.	Scary as hell (money from nothing).
MCLOX (formerly Blackrock)	See next column.	Morningstar’s take on MCLOX: Erring on the side of caution here is no mistake.
FIF (First Trust Energy Fund)		Not doing so hot right now.	They make a lot of funds.
HFQCX		No good for portfolio balancing.

As we were looking at TD vs. a financials ETF, we saw that Toronto Dominion was not up as much as the ETF. On first glance that didn’t look good for TD, but talking about it, we reasoned that TD didn’t fall as much as some of the US banks. Looking at Bank of America’s historical trends, for example, you see wild fluctuations without the stabilization that TD has had. The question becomes what sort of company do you want to invest in? Perhaps it is best to look for businesses that are more levelheaded and reasonable stewards of their profits. So it you’re going to go with a bank, make it Canadian.

In fact, going through all of these investments in our friend’s portfolio we started to wonder why these were chosen. While this has certainly given us experience with analyzing stocks a little more in depth, we still don’t have a new investment picked out. Our conversations seem to tend toward dividends as stable and attractive, so perhaps that is the way to go.

Some things to consider for next week:

For sector balancing, we need something in realty or utilities. As far as a divided purchase, we should look at something in information technology, healthcare, discretionary  (cyclical), and consumer staples. We are way thin on realty or utilities and less thin on the other categories.

Profit!