What is this thing called the mixe...

What is this thing called the mixed Fool?

Remember Shakespeare? Remember "As You Like It"? In Elizabethan days, buffoons were the only people who could achieve away with telling the conformity to fact [i]or[/i] reality to the king or queen The party-colored Fool tells the truth about investing and expectancys you'll laugh all the way to the bank.

FOOL'S seminary

GLOBAL INVESTING

The idea of investing in about foreign companies in order to diversify your portfolio and not be completely sustained by on the U.S. economy is a virtuous one. But international investing carries one risks.

- Many countries can be dangerous places to invest. Shareholder rights and protections you have sexual delight with in the United States are reduc or nonexistent in many places. Placing your circulating medium under the regulatory oversight of developing economies is risky. a certain number of countries (such as China) have created different classes of shareholders, domestic and international, and there can be no guarantee that these classes have the same rights to the clear cash flows of companies.

- You also assume transmission from hand to hand risk. The shares and earnings in other countries are recorded in the native circulation be it pounds, yen, cedi or drams. You may have done all your homework in succession a company and picked a winner, over and above your returns might lag suitable to external economic factors causing the local money; aggregate of coin to weaken against the dollar. (Of course, a weak dollar can boost earnings generated abroad.)

- Reporting standards differ. A company listed in the United States and based here must publicly report its earnings each quarter. That's not in such a manner elsewhere. In the United Kingdom, for example, this must be done sole twice a year. Few nations have reporting requirements as stringent as ours. Many don't track insider purchases and sells, lock-ups, deals with related entities, executive salaries and dividends. Each political division has its own form of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, which aren't always easy to understand. If you lack experience with a nation's accounting standards, you're at a disadvantage.

If you are real familiar with a country and company, you may do well investing in it directly. If not, you're not revealed of luck. Just zero in onward multinational U.S.-based companies.

McDonald's, for example, generates about 65 percent of its rewards abroad. Roughly half of Procter & Gamble's returns come from outside North America. It's closer to three-quarters for ExxonMobil and a third for PepsiCo. Internationally focused mutual stocks such as Dodge & Cox International or Oakmark International are another option worth considering.

THE diversified FOOL TAKE

WALGREEN'S produce

Pharmacy chain Walgreen Co (NYSE: WAG) not long ago reported third- quarter earnings, including a 124 percent sales increase and earnings expansion of 14.2 percent. A little more than 60 percent of sales at Walgreens' stores are generated by the agency of prescriptions filled for customers.

The prescription-filling business is extremely competitive, and sway reimbursement rates for seniors beneath a recently enacted Medicare Part D plan are depressed leaving little profitability for stores that fill the orders in subordination to that plan. Fortunately, economies of scale benefit bigger players, and Walgreens is big and growing.

Meanwhile, pharmacy benefit managers as it is as CareMark and Medco have been growing rapidly, for the most part filling prescriptions on a mail- order basis. Walgreens is developing its confess PBM business and will be filling prescriptions for a large managed-care organization -- UnitedHealth cluster

To compendium up, Walgreens appears to have identified and addressed the potential threats to its business. This may allow it to continue the impressive track record of 15 percent annual sales vegetation and nearly 17 percent annual earnings shooting it's tallied during the last 10 years. In addition, its go [i]or[/i] come backs on equity average nearly 20 percent and negligible liability levels mean that returns forward capital are as high.

Great companies rarely trade at bargain-basement plains and Walgreen trades at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 2879 if it be not that keep watching, and you might pick up near shares at a fairer price.

MY DUMBEST INVESTMENT

WEB OF pester

I don't remember for what cause many shares of Webvan I bought If I recall correctly, it was around $7 for share at the time. I watched it fall all the way to a dollar before selling. I bought it forward a whim, as

I conception the company's premise

of delivering groceries to family circles was a great idea. at the time I gave the business gauge enough thought as to wherefore it may or may not work, it was too late.

-- Shawn P via e-mail

The natural Responds: A company's business example is well worth examining. Webvan's original involved building expensive automated warehouses to sort groceries and proces orders, along with spending a allotment on advertising to try to get by heart more people to switch their grocer's shop shopping from traditional supermarkets to an online company. Many of its customers gave rave reviews to the service, still there weren't enough such customers. Webvan failed to generate the incomes and earnings it needed to retain afloat. The stock was trading for bare pennies per share when the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001