I'll buy your utilities from you.

We have been really seriously considering maybe buying something, anything...

We're going to go with VPU, a utilities ETF through Vanguard. It has a good dividend, low expense ratio, and covers our need to fill out the utilities sector. We also looking into beefing up our investment in consumer discretionary and staples spending. As a side note, are also quite thin on the real estate sector, but we're a little skittish with that one.

Consumer discretionary and staples spending have been on the rise for quite some time, so we may have missed the boat a bit--we probably should have hopped on in, oh, say 2009.

For next week, maybe another buy...that would be cool.

Profit!

Hadouken as Alternative Energy Source

Harnessing the power from within. Also, take that Brazil...I'm looking at you, EWZ.

This week, we took a look at utilities:

Investment	Pro	Con	Good/Bad
XLU (Utilities SPIDR)	·      Good dividend (2.9%) ·      Low expense ratio (0.18%)	·      The largest company is 10% of the fund. In other words, this fund could be a little more diverse.	The largest company in the fund, SO, is one we are interested in, so perhaps having more of it would be beneficial. Additionally, Exelon is the number two holding (around 8%), and it has not been doing well lately, but there is some potential. Some investors have recently downgraded it, and this might be a good time to catch it on before it swings up.
VPU (similar to above)	Lower expense ratio (0.14%) Higher dividend (3.8%)	(See above)	(See above)
IDU (similar to above)	Yield 3.26%	Higher expense ratio (0.46%)	This fund’s yield is higher than XLU, however it also has a higher expense ratio.
RYU	Much more diversified than the other funds we looked at, with the highest weighting being 2.75%	Highest expense ratio (0.5%)	We lose out on the potential growth or loss of Exelon.

We know that utilities are one of the weakest parts of our portfolios, so this is a balancing act to get our portfolio in line. Our friend's portfolio did not have a very attractive pick, at least not these days, so we wanted to consider some other options. Weighing the pros and cons between the various funds we looked at, we started to get a sense of what is important for us. However, next week we need to spend some time looking at EXC to see if it is worth the gamble. Another important thing to consider with anything dealing with energy is the source of this energy, coal, wind, solar, natural gas, etc. This could give us insight into how well an investment will perform. 

Profit!