Lower your Resources risk with these two

Article Excerpt

Commodity prices continue to improve with the global economy. Still, we continue to recommend investors cap their Resources holdings at 15% of their total portfolio or less. As always, we also prefer high-quality producers like these two. ALCOA CORP. $61 is a buy. The company (New York symbol AA; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Resources sector; Shares outstanding: 184.1 million; Market cap: $11.2 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.9; Dividend yield: 0.7%; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk; www.alcoa.com) is a leading producer of bauxite ore with mines in Australia, Brazil, Guinea (West Africa) and Saudi Arabia. It also operates refineries that convert bauxite into aluminum products. Alcoa continues to benefit from rising aluminum demand and prices as the economy recovers from COVID-19 lockdowns. In the fourth quarter of 2021, aluminum prices jumped 61.5% from a year earlier. That offset a 6.5% drop in shipments due to a strike at Alcoa’s smelter in Spain. As a result, the company’s sales jumped 39.6% in the quarter, to $3.34 billion from $2.39 billion a..