Top finance picks—outside of the banks

Article Excerpt

We advise investors to diversify their Finance sector holdings with non-bank stocks such as the four we analyze below. All are leaders in their niche fields, which helps cut their risk. Three are also spinoffs from larger firms. That has spurred their share prices. EBAY INC. $31 (Nasdaq symbol EBAY; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 1.1 billion; Market cap: $34.1 billion; Priceto- sales ratio: 3.9; No dividends paid; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.ebay.com) operates online auction websites in over 30 countries. Sellers pay fees to list and sell their goods through these sites. The company also operates several other popular websites, including StubHub (ticket sales for live events) and Shopping.com (comparison shopping). eBay set up its PayPal online-payment division (see right) as a separate firm on July 20, 2015. Since then, the stock has gained 11%. In the quarter ended June 30, 2016, the company earned $496 million, down 4.1% from $517 million a year earlier. It spent…