Q: My daughter just turned 18 and we opened her TFSA account this week. Trying to spark her interest in investing I was screening for some young hip stocks I could put her onto ( gaming, social media, clothing brands, etc) ....saddly in Canada I didn't find anything. So went to my second option which is " work related stocks" which in my case is engineering and my daughter going off to school in the fall in engineering as well. I have owned WSP since before the merger ( Genivar) so done very well. Stantech is your holding in the growth portfolio although I am concerned with the strong run over the past year and a looming ( hopefully shallow) recession that it might not be a great time to get into the name over WSP which has done well but lagged a bit more this year. So WSP or STN for a 30+ yr hold, or look elsewhere short term due to sector risk with the looming slowdown.
5i Research Answer:
We would side with WSP today slightly. But we think either could be owned. ATZ might be another growth idea for a young woman. On the E&P companies, we are less concerned about a recession. Each has a very large backlog of contracts. WSP ~$14B, STN $6.2B. Considering that most recessions are short, and this one has been discussed to death already (and economic numbers remain solid) we would not see any compelling reason to wait, especially for a young investor.