Special update on our #1 picks

Article Excerpt

In choosing a Stock of the Year, we aim for a “heads you win, tails you break even” situation. These stocks can put on above-average rises, but they’re unlikely to be disasters if they disappoint. Our past #1 picks, including Agrium (see page 101), sometimes take a year or more to get going. Other times they take off right away. Instead of zeroing in on one stock or a small group, we continue to recommend that you build a balanced portfolio of well-established companies. TECK RESOURCES LTD. $26 (Toronto symbol TCK.B; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Resources sector; Shares outstanding: 576.3 million; Market cap: $15.0 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.6; Dividend yield: 3.5%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.teck.com) is a leading producer of metallurgical coal, a key ingredient in steelmaking. It also produces copper and zinc. The stock is down 29.7% from $37 when we named it our top pick for 2013. That’s mainly because slowing industrial activity, mainly in Asia, has hurt commodity…