WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR? We're peeling back the layers on the iShares Cdn Growth Index Fund to find out which stocks passed the company's growth screen and made it into the exchange-traded fund. MORE ABOUT THE FUND The exchange-traded fund, which trades like a stock but is put together like a mutual fund, mirrors the Dow Jones Canada select growth index. Its components are chosen with a six-point screen made up of projected price-to-earnings ratio, projected earnings growth, price-to-book ratio, dividend yield, trailing price-earnings ratio and trailing earnings growth. The index is then weighted by float-adjusted market capitalization, to a maximum of 10 per cent for a single security. The fund - which has a market capitalization of $27.5-million (as of Friday's close at $17.98 a unit) - is down about 2.3 per cent this year, and is down 40.2 per cent from its 52-week-high $30.06, reached in June. The iShares value-oriented ETF is down about 7 per cent this year - we'll take a closer look at its components tomorrow. WHAT DID WE FIND OUT? With the majority of the fund's holdings coming from the mining sector (38.35 per cent) and energy sector (25.43 per cent), its success is widely dependent on a recovery in commodity prices. The technology sector comes in third, with an 8.27-per-cent weighting. A runup in the price of gold - up about 20 per cent since the stock market's bottom on Nov. 21 - has helped its most heavily weighted stock Barrick Gold Corp. gain 9.1 per cent so far this year. The top-performing growth stock of the fund's 20 heaviest weighted issues has been Research In Motion , up 31 per cent from the start of the year even though it isn't the stock with the highest expected EPS growth in the next year. That honour goes to Suncor Energy Inc. , with expected 12-month EPS growth of 87.3 per cent.
- style="list-style-type: none;"> Table: View result set