Balance your portfolio with aggressive stocks

Article Excerpt

A key element of a successful portfolio is a diversity of holdings, including conservative and, for many investors, aggressive stocks. Still, as a general rule, we recommend limiting aggressive investments to no more than 20% of your overall holdings. You can further cut your risk by sticking with high-quality aggressive stocks such as the three we analyze below. Even so, we see only two of them as buys right now. STANTEC INC. $120 is a buy. This engineering firm (Toronto symbol STN; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 114.1 million; Market cap: $13.7 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.9; Dividend yield: 0.7%; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk; www.stantec.com) is a leading seller of consulting, project-delivery, design and technology services. The U.S. provides 51% of its revenue, followed by Canada (24%) and other countries (255). Stantec tends to use acquisitions to spur its growth—it has acquired over 135 companies since 1994. The company cuts the risk of using acquisitions to expand by targeting smaller, easy-to-absorb firms. Moreover,…