The Canadian Investor - 4 Stocks to Buy Now and Not Touch Until 2035

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

Following up on our recent RESP segment, Simon answers a listener question about RESPs. We go deep on how to maximize government benefits like the CESG and Canada Learning Bond, and outline smart approaches for front-loading, automating, and adjusting RESP investments as your child gets older. Simon also shares how he's planning to use his daughter’s RESP as a tool for both long-term compounding and financial education. We discuss when to start involving your child in RESP management, how to plan for non-traditional post-secondary paths, and how RESP funds can be used for much more than just tuition.To wrap things up, we each pick a few "set-it-and-forget-it" stocks we'd feel confident buying and holding for the next decade and explain what makes these businesses so durable. Tickers of stocks discussed: BRK.B, FTS.TO, CP.TO, PWR Get your TSX Meetup tickets here! Check out our portfolio by going to Jointci.com Our Website Our New Youtube Channel! Canadian Investor Podcast Network Twitter: @cdn_investing Simon’s twitter: @Fiat_Iceberg Braden’s twitter: @BradoCapital Dan’s Twitter: @stocktrades_ca Want to learn more about Real Estate Investing? Check out the Canadian Real Estate Investor Podcast! Apple Podcast - The Canadian Real Estate Investor  Spotify - The Canadian Real Estate Investor  Web player - The Canadian Real Estate Investor Asset Allocation ETFs | BMO Global Asset Management Sign up for Fiscal.ai for free to get easy access to global stock coverage and powerful AI investing tools. Register for EQ Bank, the seamless digital banking experience with better rates and no nonsense.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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that it's a business. Just my reminder to people who own safe Google's, don't be surprised when there's a cycle. If there's uncertainty in the markets, there's going to be some great opportunities for investors. This has to be one of the biggest quarters I've seen from this company in quite some time. Welcome back to the Canadian Investor Podcast. quite some time.

Welcome back to the Canadian Investor Podcast. We are back for another regular episode here. We'll be looking at our ESPs once again, got a question on joint TCI, so I'll do a bit of a deeper dive on that. And then we'll also be talking about some companies, So two companies each that we'd love to own and for the next 10 years. Basically, if you can't sell the company for 10 years, which two companies would you like to own?

I think that's the premise that we use for that one. Yeah, it's kind of like the basis. Like if you could buy two companies and somebody told you you couldn't look at them for the next 10 years, what would those two companies be? And it kind of like shifts, I guess it kind of shifts the focus from, you know, not necessarily the highest earning stocks, but the stocks that have a high probability of, you know, earning more in the next 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. So it'll be a pretty interesting segment.

So it'll be a pretty interesting segment. Yeah, I looked at it more from a perspective of kind of medium to long term trends without looking too much about the current valuation. So one company I own, one that I don't. So that the one that I don't that I'm talking about and you'll have to stick until the end. But it's a company that I really like but from a valuation basis it's still very expensive so something that I would probably start a position the next year or two of the valuation can come down a bit. Yeah it should be a pretty good segment. The RESP one I actually wasn't supposed to be this was supposed to be a solo recording but my vacation fell apart so I'm here.

Yeah exactly so I did most of these notes while I was on the airplane traveling to Calgary. So finished that yesterday before the episode. And it's really a question that I got from James on Joint TCI, who will be a father soon. It was a couple of weeks ago. So not sure if he's a father right now. If you are, congratulations. But he was asking about contribution strategy and what investments would make sense for an RESP So I'll give a bit more information because the last time we talked about it was also for a question

I believe and it was more a general overview so I'll try to talk about some of the things we hadn't talked about and I would recommend to people to maybe listen to that previous episode was a couple weeks ago you'll be I think you'll be able to find it pretty quickly and then listen to that segment and you can listen to this one and both combined should give you a pretty good sense of a lot of different topics surrounding our ESPs. Now the first thing I want to look at is we had mentioned about government programs being available.

So there are a few. I'll focus a bit more on the programs that are available to Canadians regardless of where they're located, although there are some criteria depending on which one. And I'll touch quickly on some of the provincial programs as well. So the first one, the most well-known one, the Canada Education Savings Grant, CESG, matches 20% of your contribution up to $2,500. So that means you can get $500 each year. There is a lifetime maximum for the grant of $7,200. If you don't use the full amount for any given year you can carry forward and catch up on a subsequent year. However, an important note is

that you can only catch up one year at a time. So if you didn't contribute for multiple years, you'll be able to catch up but you can't catch up all those years at once. You'll have to do it basically kind of a double catch up each year. So it's going to take a little bit of time. So you would have to catch up one year at a time, meaning you could contribute a total, say in a given year of $5,000 and then receive $1,000 towards the CSG grant and repeat that the following year and of course until you've fully caught up on the missed year of the grant. So that's how it works and the CSG is available until the year in which the child turns 17.

Okay. Any questions? Yeah, it's not 18. I would imagine they make that rule so that you can't just throw a bunch of time, a ton of money in at the end and get a maximum, get the maximum payout. That's probably why they make it so you can't match. I would say. Yeah. I mean, I would assume so at the end of the day, right? Like it's, I'm sure there's a reason, maybe encourage people to start early. I'm not quite sure the reasoning behind it, but that's the main benefit available.

There are other benefits, like I mentioned. So the first one, the Canada Learning Bond. So this one is available for eligible children from low-income families born in 2004 or later and it does require a low income. So it will depend the income threshold is dependent on the number of children. So 1 to 3 the household income would have to be less than 55,867 and that's adjusted adjusted income so I'm not quite sure what the adjustment is but whatever, I'll just give the numbers here. Four kids would be less than $63,036 and five kids would be less than $70,234 so it's, I

mean that's not a lot of money to have five kids. I can't even imagine raising five kids on a $70,000 salary. Yeah. I guess it really depends where you live, right? Some areas, maybe some more rural areas where it's cheaper to live would be the, my sense, but even then I would assume that food is still pretty expensive in those areas. So no, it's, so it is not available to a lot of people because their income is simply just too great. Now the thing about this benefit is there's no contribution to the RESP that are needed to get

the CLB. So the beneficiary, which is the child, will receive $500 in the first year of eligibility and $100 for each year after until the age of 15, there is a $2,000 lifetime maximum. So I guess it's really to help out low-income families to be able to pay for education. I guess that's, I would assume that's the logic behind it. And for BC and Quebec, there are some specific provincial programs. For BC residents, it's called the British Columbia Training and Education Savings Grant and for Quebec residents, it's the Quebec Education

Savings Incentive. So I won't go into detail about those. I just wanted to mention them so if you are from those provinces and you want to open our RISP just make sure you go and look up what those programs are because you'd be able you might be eligible for them and be able to benefit from them. So now in terms of general strategies for an RISP, so maximizing your matching contribution early if you can to get the most out of compounding and I think this can be really powerful. So you could do this by front loading your contributions if you have the money to do it. With that big caveat, I know not everyone will have the financial resources to do that. That's because in order to maximize the CSG, and I'll just assume that people in this situation would not be eligible to the Canada Learning Bond,

if you have that much cash on the sidelineeline you probably are making more than those income levels. In order to maximize the CSG you'll need lifetime contributions of $36,000. So that means that you have an extra $14,000 that you can contribute without hitting the lifetime RESP maximum of $50,000, which is the maximum you can contribute to an RESP. So if you front load that $14,000 the first few years and make sure that you have enough contribution room remaining in subsequent years to maximize the CSG, you can really benefit from more compounding because you get that money earlier in so you have more time to make it grow.

Of course, make sure that you make the correct calculations. I did this like just kind of back of the napkin math but it should be roughly accurate because if you don't make the calculation correctly and you over-contribute the lifetime maximum, there's the classic CRA penalty of a one percent per month for all over contribution I see classic because I believe the TFSA and RRSP is the same thing, right? If I remember correctly Yeah, you get that like $2,000 buffer or whatever on your RRSP, but I think after that it is It's 1% a month until you until you pull the balance out. So similar penalty Probably just a blanket penalty for

overcontributions all around yeah, I've heard people have actually like calculating almost to the dollar the $2,000 buffer so that they would like Use the 2000 and not over contribute just so they can really max out their RSP. I've heard that before Yeah, I don't think you can claim the two grand as a tax deduction though, can you? But you can go over 2k and or so you can contribute $2,000 more, but I don't think you're allowed to claim it. I don't know. Wouldn't you be allowed like the whole point of a penalty is so you don't claim too much, no? I'll have to once you're talking.

Yeah, I don't know. That's a good day. Yeah, because I've done it before and I was told not to claim the two, the $2,000 buffer is fine for over contribution, but I was, I didn't claim it until the next year. But as you're talking, I'll look that up. See if you can. Yeah. No, you could be right. I'm just, I was playing devil's advocate here.

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People are just on there talking, sharing their investment ideas and using the analytics tools. So go ahead, blossom social in the app store and I'll see you there. The second thing you could do, so the first one is obviously, you have a decent amount of cash available, you're able to do those upfront contributions.

Not everyone will be in that situation and that's fine. So if you want to still maximize the RASP, but you know what, you just want to do steady contributions, you don't have tens of thousands of dollars sitting on the sideline, well, one way to do it is simply to contribute $208 a month. You'll make sure that you are contributing $2,500 a year by doing that, which will max out the CSG grants. So by doing that, you'll actually be able to max out the government contribution or the matching that's offered by the government by doing that.

Of course, you could contribute more than that because if you start making calculations if you just do $2500 a year it's most likely you'll be below the $50,000 lifetime maximum so you could do more than that but if you want to maximize the CSG that's what you would do and of course you have to if you don't want to contribute beyond the matching, then once you hit 7,200 in terms of total matching throughout the lifetime of the RRSP, you would stop because then there would no longer be any government money for the subsequent amounts. Yeah, it's good. I mean, it's a pretty good program. I would argue that, I mean, I'm pretty sure the matching was relatively the same when

I was going to school. I mean, I think the cost of education has gone up quite a bit. I'm kind of surprised that they haven't bumped this a bit but yeah. In terms of the RSPs, you are not allowed to claim that $2,000 over. No, you're not allowed. It's not tax deductible. It's not tax deductible but you don't get hit with the 1%. Penalize for it, yeah. Yeah, no, that would make sense. Indeed. Now, you can definitely adjust, well, not definitely, I mean, it would be highly recommended

to adjust your investment strategy over time because we talked about that a little bit the last time because think about it, you're starting when you start early, you have over 15 years before your child will need the money for education related expenses. So 15 years out, the markets will likely be up. If we look at historical precedence for periods of like 15 plus years, you can be in equities only for that period of time and the markets will likely to go up.

But as that time horizon gets closer and closer and you get closer to needing the money then It would be smart to start to rebalance and add in some Less risky asset whether it's cash or GICs You don't need to go all or the other but you'll definitely want to start adjusting The positions a bit more from less risky assets. So from equities to a bit more cash, GICs notice I don't say bonds just because I think there are some risks especially in longer dated bonds but that's people's correct decision whether they want to do that or not.

For my personal RESP or the one for my daughter, I won't change the asset mix too much until she's probably like hitting her teens. So about 5-6 years out, then I would slowly change the asset mix to a bit more conservative and as you get closer and closer then you can make it even more conservative and a bit more in those less risky assets. Assets that will not be as volatile as other assets like equities. I do have a little bit of Bitcoin ETFs in the RISP as well. So clearly I would trim that down because the last thing you want is a really volatile portfolio as your child starts needing the fund for education related expenses.

So very similar to the strategy that someone would need for retirement, the biggest difference versus retirement is you'll need that money for a much shorter period of time. Because think about it, like, and obviously you don't know for how long you'll live into retirement, but it's not unusual for people to lift off their retirement accounts for 20, 30, 40 years. But the reality with education, that time period will probably be anywhere from, you know, two to three years to probably 10 years, depending if they're going to like, you know, masters and PhD type of type of program. So it is a little bit different than that because there's a bigger portion of the funds that will be used quicker than if you compare it to retirement.

Yeah. And I mean, like you said, the last thing you want to do is have your child be 17 or 18 and you're a hundred percent in equities and the market draws down like 30% because ultimately you're going to have to cash that out. I would argue like the account is probably like if you're going for like a 10-year education you're probably gonna run this account dry before that 10 years end. I mean I guess it depends on how well you did during the earlier part of it when you did go a bit more aggressive but yeah it's yeah you could make the argument that you actually would need to go more conservative for an RSP the closer you get Because you'll have to draw down on it much quicker Then you would draw down on retirement funds because retirement funds you always have to keep in mind that you want to create a good balance

Between you know having some money to use in the next three four or five years But also you don't want to be too heavily in bonds or cash because you also have another potential 20, 25, 30 years to live. So you still want to have some growth in there where this, you'll probably want to have some growth left, but you may want to be even more conservative because it's going to be drawn down on much faster than retirement accounts. Yeah, you're probably, well, I don't really know how much, you know, post-secondary school costs. I would imagine 20, 30,000 bucks a year if you're going to,

you know, doing something major. Yeah. So I mean, yeah, there's a lot more drawdowns involved. And I know like you can use this account for you know rent, food, yeah, trade school, vehicles, things like that so you're probably gonna pull this account, well you definitely are gonna pull this account much much faster than they uh than like say you know somebody in retirement. Yeah and it's really interesting because I think it also encourages you to have discussion with your kid, right? Like with your child, probably like, definitely like three, four, five years. And that's the last part I'll talk about is just start gauging what are their interests? Do you think they'll go to university?

Are they going to go to trade school instead? Because it's not going to be the same length, right? And you know, trade school, they may just be eligible and you'd know trade school better than I do, but I don't know how long it is. Like is it the full process? It's not very long. Like four or five years? Like not really long?

Well, you go to school for two months a year. And then I think in terms of electrical, the final year was was three months, but it's also a lot cheaper because well, at least in Alberta, I don't know anywhere else, but they subsidize it quite a bit. Like back when I went to trade school, it was 900 bucks got into school. So I mean, if you're going to trade school and you have a maxed out RESP, you're probably going to need to find unique ways to to draw that down because the schooling itself will definitely not cost you that much. That's where a tax professional probably would come in handy because you probably won't use all of it. But my point being is have

that discussion for the child because that's the biggest difference with this versus retirement. Is retirement there's always an unknown you don't know when you're gonna die. Like let's be honest, it's unknown. You don't know when you're gonna die. Like, let's be honest, that's out there. You don't know when you're gonna die. So you try to plan to make sure that, you know, you'll have enough money for most scenarios, even if you end up living a long time. Whereas this, if you have those discussions,

and obviously I know that kids will change their mind, you know, especially at that age. But if you get a sense, I mean, it's pretty easy. I've seen a lot of teenagers, like if you get a sense, I mean, it's pretty easy. I've seen a lot of teenagers, like you can get a sense pretty quickly whether they're more interested in working with their hands, potentially being in trades versus something that would be into university.

So as you have those discussions, you can manage your portfolio accordingly, because if the child is gonna need trade school and they're only gonna use the funds. Let's say a year or two Well, maybe you can be a bit more aggressive with the investments than you would if the child would need the funds for a period Of ten years for example, so there's there's really a lot of consideration I know it sounds a bit complex, but I'm just trying to mention some of the variables to keep in mind It's not a perfect science, but the beauty with this is that

you can probably have more certainty, the duration that it will be required for versus retirement where it's really the unknown. Yeah, I mean, I guess just some final notes on this in my regard, just the RESP in general. I mean, I've talked to, I don't know much about these accounts. Obviously I don't have kids. I will soon probably need to research them a lot. But I mean, they

can be used for more than tuition. I mean, pretty much any, any type of expense that deals with anything related to the school. I mean, school textbooks, supplies, tools, like I know in trade school, you could buy the tools you needed to do so. I mean school textbooks, supplies, tools like I know in trade school you could buy the tools you needed to do so. Laptops, computers, I think even vehicles. Like if you have a child who needs a vehicle to get to and from school I mean you can you I'm pretty sure you can utilize the RESP to actually get them a vehicle. So oh yeah there we go transportation. Yeah so this is the official Government of Canada website. So savings and benefits in the RESP can be used to pay for eligible education expenses

like rent, tuition, books, tools, and transportation. So quite vague. Yeah. I would say for the most part, you know, use your judgment. If you're not sure, you can always consult with a tax professional or even call the CRA to get some guidance on it. We are not tax professionals here. I'm just reading exactly word for word what it is on the Government of Canada website.

But it is, like you said, it can definitely be used for more things than just like tuition, for example. Yeah. Okay. So now, the one thing to a couple of last things I want to talk about for the RESP is you definitely want to increase the rebalancing once you've drawn out a strategy and allocation strategy that you want for the portfolio. The closer you get to needing the fund, the more you'll want to rebalance.

And I know Brayden and I have the past I've talked a lot about letting your winners run. Well, this is not a situation where you want to have one position be 35-40% of the portfolio. If you have 30-40 years in front of you, the funds are needed for retirements. Completely different discussion. I think it's too much for my own, although I do have one large position so I shouldn't say too much. But then again, you definitely want to rebalance because the more concentrated you are, the riskier it gets. And no matter how good of a company it is, and I hear that all the time and I see it all the time, is people will have, be super concentrated in a blue chip stock

Well, I can go and name you probably like good five companies in the last 20 30 years that at one point We're considered blue chip companies and not very risky that have either gone under or They're a shell of themselves and investors lost a lot of money. So you really want to make sure you have a reasonable allocation and it's not out of whack because even the safest investments, if your allocation is too big, they can really wreck you in terms of the outcome you wanted to achieve here. Yeah, I mean, look at a company like United Health recently. It was supposed to be the first trillion dollar health care company and they're down, well, they've got to be down over 50% in a very short amount of time. And that would have definitely been a US blue chip stock that was growing at a pretty reasonable

pace and some issues. There's obviously a lot of Investigations going on in that regard, but I mean good stocks they fall I mean they can fall quite easily no matter how confident you are it can happen Yeah, like G's an easy example that comes to mind you can think of an IBM in the past you can think of Intel which yes, it was in the chip space but it had a dominant position it's a shell of itself now I think Kraft Heinz was one of them one of the bigger mistakes that Buffett did was that the one I think was one of them anyways it was one of those consumer staples that ended up 3M was a good example so there's a lot

of example of these blue chips that and you know they don't necessarily go bankrupt or anything like that but they go sideways or they could have a big drop and there's the investment is cut in half for example it's been known to happen. Yep it does happen. Yeah and the last thing I would say and this is a bit more to what I was talking about earlier about talking to your child. And this is something I've been thinking about quite a bit, even though my daughter is only about to be three in a month or so.

But it's a good way to involve your child in the management of your RISP, of course. I won't involve her at three. I still have trouble fully understanding what she's saying when she talks to me. But when she's probably a bit closer to 11, 12, I would probably use it as a tool to start and educate her on financial literacy. We did an episode on some of the things you want

to start talking to teenagers about financial literacy. We did an episode on some of the things you want to start talking to teenagers about financial literacy and this could be a really good tool. You can start by, I know compounding would be the first one and just show, hey look at the amount we contributed for RSP and look what it is now, now that you're 11 12. We started when you were just a few months old and look at what the amount. So just that kind of thing, I think it's a really good tool to be able to involve

your child in those discussions because at the end of the day, what's great is that they have a vested interest in this too. Yeah, because it's directly for them, right? I mean, you're investing for them. So I mean, they'd probably be motivated to learn more about it and you know obviously increase that because it's obviously gonna be paying for their education. Yeah exactly so I think it's it's a great tool. I don't know if I'm coming up with this from a like from

this standpoint. I've read quite a bit about our ESP. I've never heard anyone say that. If someone else has talked about that before, then sorry I'm stealing the idea, but I didn't see it. So I'll just say that it's my own. But I think it's a really good opportunity to be able to just involve your child in the management. You can even say, you know what, let's look at companies that you like. So it could be Eritrea. Maybe it'll still be thriving at that point and maybe she'll want to buy some Eritrea stock when she's 11, 12. Then sure, you can also teach the child about allocation and say, okay, like Eritrea, but it is a fashion play. There are some risks. So we will add it to your ISP, but instead of being, we won't put it as 15%, but maybe it can be two to 3% if you want a little bit

because you like the clothes and so on. So there are some ways to involve your child. And the last way I would do it is on top of talking to them and getting a sense on what they want to do later, whether it's more university, trade school or whatnot, there's a third option that it's very possible that in some instances I've had friends that were like that that They just don't do post-secondary education They want to start a business. They're very Entrepreneurial at that point you will likely not need the funds

So what I would do in that situation if that's the sense I get at the end of the day I want my daughter to be happy I would have and this is more I guess raising a child but I would have that discussion to say look you're gonna have to work hard and if you're ready then let's talk about some business ideas of what you want to do and you can look at working with a tax professional to then be able to cash out some of the RASP and what I would probably do is say, you know what? We'll cash it out and we'll be able to use the fund to help you start that business endeavor.

Obviously minus the grants, because the grants you have to pay back to the government. And there's also going to be some taxes that will be applied. So let's say as a rough number, I'm just throwing out there, it's 50% less than the value of the RSP If she would end up not using it, then I would have that discussion with her and say you know what? This money was for your education, but you clearly want to start a business. You're very driven

You're saying doing all the right things then we'll use Whatever money is left to support you in that business endeavor. Whether it works or fail, you know, I guess it's probably a 50-50 chance at that point because it's the first time. But at the end of the day, it is something that would help her to kind of spread her wings lack of better words. Yeah.

Yeah, because you can pull out your contributions are tax free, right? But all the earnings you have on them are taxed? Yeah, that's my understanding is all the earnings, the returns that you do would be taxed, your contributions, you can pull them tax free and then the grants you have to return them to the government. But just the straight up grants. I think it's just a straight up value, like the nominal value of the grants. So any returns you did on the, yeah, exactly.

So you could still have a decent chunk of money. Look, some people may not agree with that business approach and some people may be more inclined for, you know, just pushing for the education. Everyone, you know, people can raise their children the way they want, but that's the way I would do it. Obviously, I would make sure that's the way I would do it. Obviously, I would make sure that my daughter would have a strong plan.

But I think at the end of the day, you want to make sure they do something that they enjoy. And if she sees her dad being an entrepreneur and she wants to follow in my footsteps that way, who knows? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, I had mentioned like in trade school, it'd probably be pretty hard to pull down on the entire account. I mean, I'm not gonna mention anything on the podcast

because I don't know if it's actually, you know, the right way to do things, but I've been reading- You told me off the record, so that's- Yeah, some very unique RESP strategies that I was reading about before this. Again, I'm not gonna mention them because I don't know if they're actually supposed to be doing it that way, but yeah, it's

It's a good account. It's I mean you invest your child's education early Obviously you have like well, actually you have 35 years don't you for it to compound? But I mean that would be because it can be open for 35 years. Yeah, I can't really see I mean I guess you could yeah I believe it's 35 years get into your early early 30s and decide you want to go to school and that money would still be there. So, yeah, it's a very useful tool. Yeah, exactly. And look, for trade school,

you can kind of use the same reasoning, right? Like if you're in a situation where trade school, you only use a part of the RASP and there's a lot of people in trades that start their own business and you'll need some upfront capital to be able to do that Yeah, so using the rest of the funds obviously minus the what you need to return and taxes and blah blah blah You could still you know help your child out with not only the education for the trade school

But also help them out where maybe they can start that own business without any debt which is or less debt than they would, right? If they need to buy a vehicle or whatnot, like they'll probably need some equipment but at least offset some of the costs so they are in a decent position and they don't have to work their butt off for the first couple of years just to kind of make all those payments and pay back those loans type of deal. Yeah, and I guess one thing I'll mention as well is the, we had mentioned that like the earnings are taxable,

but I mean, if you're in school, you're probably not gonna be earning that much. So I mean, the taxes are gonna be fairly minimal. I mean, this is a very, it's not obviously a tax free account because you're gonna pay on those earnings, but I mean, you're not gonna earn that's not obviously a tax-free account because you're going to, you know, you're going to pay on those earnings. But I mean, it's, you're not going to earn that much when you're in post-secondary.

So you might end up not paying all that much tax on the withdrawals anyway, depending on your situation. So yeah, great account. Yeah, exactly. I think we had talked about that when we last look at it maybe a month or so ago. But no, that's correct so it's 31 years until the account was open so I think you can make contributions. I know so you can make contribution to an RASP until 31 years after it was first open

you would then have until the end of the 35th years after the plan was first opened to use the funds before the RISP expires or up to 40 years for a specified plan. Not quite sure what that is, but let's just say it's 31 and 35 years. So you were right for closing the account. But hopefully that was useful. We kind of went a bit beyond just the RISP, but also just getting a sense of what your child wants to do and so on, which I think is as equally important because you need to know how much of the funds you'll need and for all along, like that's a big part of the equation that I think a lot of people just don't look at.

And it's actually a big part of the planning in terms of doing the investments properly. So it should not be overlooked. It's not an exact science. You're going to have to talk to your child. You're going to have to really get a good sense, but I think it should not be overlooked. Yeah. I mean, I think when I was that age, I changed my mind like six times over the course of

a few years. So I mean, it's difficult, but I mean, it's definitely worthy of discussion. Some kids know what they want to do very early. Yeah. But usually I find you can at least see, even though I totally agree, I changed my mind quite a few times and I saw a lot of kids plowing through tens of thousands of dollar tuitions and changing their mind, but I feel at a relatively young age, you can still get an idea of whether your child is more inclined for like trades versus school, like just those big buckets.

I think usually you can get a pretty good idea of like whether they like they enjoy one more than the other. And I think that's a big part of it. Of course, then you have to narrow down a little bit. They may change your mind, but just getting a sense definitely won't hurt. Yep, definitely. Want to buy a stock,

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The engagement is amazing. This is a really vibrant community that they're building. And people share their portfolios, their trades, their investment ideas in real time. And it's all built on the concept of transparency because brokerage accounts are linked. And then once you link your brokerage account, you can get in-depth portfolio insights,

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People are just on there talking, sharing their investment ideas and using the analytics tools. So go ahead, Blossom Social in the app store and I'll see you there. Okay, so now let's move on to the next segment here. So the two stocks pig that we'd be happy to hold for the next decade without looking at them presented by EQ banks. So normally we do stocks on a radar, but we're switching it up a little bit. So stock on a radar, if we could not look at them for 10 years, there you go, presented by a great

sponsor, EQ Bank. So I'll let you start with your first one. I'll do one and then we'll do back and forth for two each. Yeah. So I kind of went with the mentality of this is yeah, not necessarily chasing, you know, what I believe would be the best performing stock over the last 10 years, over the next 10 years, but one that I'd be comfortable with buying. And again, like if somebody told me I couldn't look at it for a decade and the first one I picked was CPKC. So Canadian Pacific, Kansas City. So I mean, the argument on this one is pretty simple.

It would, you know, its moat would effectively be why you would have a lot of confidence buying this today and not looking for a decade because I mean, they pretty much have impenetrable business models. I mean, with the acquisition of Kansas City Southern, CP Rail, I would argue, has the largest moat out of any railway in North America. I mean, it can carry goods Let's say automobile automobile parts all the way to their destination throughout North America without it being handed off to another railway And even if it was economically financially feasible to build out a railway network

For somebody else it would take much longer Than a decade to do so and because there's so little rail railroads in North America, I mean, when volumes pick back up again, it's almost inevitable that, you know, CP rail will realize the benefits from this, you know, because of their moat, they're able to control the pricing with ease as well. I mean, which somewhat makes them sheltered from potential inflationary environment. I mean, for example, if fuel costs got out of control,

they would pretty much just pass these costs off to people who want to ship via the rail because they really have nowhere else to go. I mean, sure, there's other competition from, you know, railways like CNR or Berkshire's BNSF, but I mean, in this instance, if you were to hit that type of environment, those railways would probably have to raise prices as well, which would probably offset it

And another thing is railways, you know, they're capital intensive, but the key difference here between Let's say a railway and a telecom is once the tracks are laid. They do provide revenue for decades decades like Outside of you know, the simple maintenance capital expenditures. If we look to something like telecoms, the way the technology has evolved over the years, I mean, older infrastructure does become obsolete a lot quicker than railways. I mean, there's tracks that they built probably 50 years ago that they're still using today, whereas, you know, telecom's not really the same situation.

So I mean, they spend a lot of money, but they also reap the rewards of that for a very long time. And another thing here, are you saying the rotator phones that they were using 50 years ago, it's not the same technology that's supporting it then today? No, okay. But the same tracks they put in 50 years ago, they're still making money off those tracks. And yeah, I mean, I guess just on the other end, management team, I mean, if you're going to buy a stock with the intentions of never looking at it for a decade, you want a team in place that makes strong decisions. And I do believe in that regard.

And people can probably go to our episode on CP and CNR to probably see, because we talk about the management team quite a bit. I won't go over it again here, but I do believe CP Rail has been the better capital allocator. So I mean, this is here, but I do believe CP Rail has been the better capital allocator. So I mean, this is one company that I do own. And if somebody told me I couldn't look at it for 10 years, I definitely would have zero problem with that.

Which, by the way, we still get people saying they're enjoying that, really enjoying that episode even like a month later. So we'll do more of those. We did the dollar stores recently, so we'll try to do, maybe we can try to do one of those every month make it pretty fun I have to say yeah, it's hard to disagree with that. Did you had anything else to say or no recipe? Okay, so for me, I'll go side. It was in reverse order, but because it has some similarities I decided I went with Berkshire Hathaway So the reason it does own some railways, like you said,

but the first reason would be that I would hold for the next 10 years is Buffett. So Warren Buffett, and people may say, what? What are you talking about? He's 94 years old, he probably won't be there in 10 years. Well, you never know. You never know, so that is the first thing I will say. You never know, but it's not because, you know because there's a chance he still won't be there or if he's still there he might not

be very involved with Berkshire Hathaway and that's very possible. But I really trust that Buffett has built a very good succession plan over the last couple of decades. I mean, to my knowledge, they've been working on this for like close to 20 years. Not quite, but pretty, pretty close to 20 years. And that Greg Able will continue running the business in a very similar fashion from my, from what they've been saying. He's been very involved in the business, especially in recent years. So he, and I just trust that Buffett chose someone that would run the business in a similar fashion as him. So I'm kind of using my trust towards him

to basically the next 10 years. And the second reason I like Berkshire is because of the businesses they own. And it gives me a lot of diversification with just one place, whether it's businesses that they own outright, like the railway you just mentioned or those that are simply shareholders.

I think the overall portfolio is very attractive. Can think insurance, utilities, energies, railroads, companies like AmEx, Coca-Cola. It's a really interesting mix of business that should age pretty well in the next decade. Maybe not all of them. Clearly Apple could potentially be disrupted, but they also reduce their position. And I think that the fact that they tend to invest in businesses for long periods of time and in good quality of businesses, but they are also not shy of, they will exit positions if they don't think it's a good investment or something has happened. Sometimes it may take them a bit

too long to exit those position and Wells Fargo is the first one that comes to mind in terms of exiting positions that maybe weren't the best idea in hindsight. But overall, I don't have any reason to doubt that Berkshire would not do well for 10 years even if I couldn't touch the stock for 10 years and not look at it Yeah, they had they bailed on the airlines quickly I remember he admitted that was a was a very bad bad mistake But yeah, I mean like a lot of people who don't pay attention a lot to Berkshire I mean they own a ton of companies. I mean, I believe they fruit of the loom which is like a you know, oh, yeah Clothing company company I guess. DuraCell.

Tidy whiteys. Yeah that's what I. Yeah. Yeah they own DuraCell batteries. Oh yeah. Yeah. Dairy Queen. They got a lot of different business models and yeah I mean like a lot of people you know

they don't doubt that Buffett you know has been very good at picking stocks, individual equities for a very long time but they're somehow uncertain that you know he wouldn't be able to pick a management team to replace them. I mean, it's been in the works for a very, very long time. But yeah, it's, I mean, I own Berkshire, Berkshire is my largest equity holding. So I definitely agree with you here. Yeah. And I do own it now. So I started literally I've been, I've added a couple of times over the last few months since he announced that he would be leaving just because of that is I think the market is being to kind of focus on the fact that Buffett will be leaving even though it's been in the works for years like literally everyone

knew it was coming and somehow they they're panicking like I don't fully get it but anyways let's move on to your second name here in the name of time so we don't go on for too long. Yeah, so the second one would be Fortis. So Fortis is definitely not going to be flashy by any stretch of the imagination but again if you were running an experiment where you'd have to buy it and not look at it for 10 years, it would be pretty hard not to include it. And this is primarily because 99% of the company's earnings come from regulated utilities.

So regulated utilities are effectively a legal monopoly. I mean, starting from the meter base on your house working backwards, the utility owns everything. I mean, the wires, the power poles, the distribution lines, the generation facilities, all that type of stuff. This effectively means there's zero chance of competitors entering the space and taking market share away. I mean much like the railways, it would just make no sense from a financial perspective and also it's regulated to the point where they can't really do so. So effectively what the regulated utility does, it owns all these assets, it will then go

to a particular municipality they are providing power to and they effectively come up with an agreement which makes sure that the utility is pretty much guaranteed to earn a certain amount of profit but not an egregious amount. I mean they come into agreements with that and you will typically see these utilities speak about the rate base growth in their guidance. And this is because the amount of return a utility is allowed to earn is typically based on the rate base. So a regulated utilities rate base grows via capital investments into their assets. So all those assets they own, the poles, the facilities, the wires, all that type of stuff. The larger the asset base they have, the more its profits grow

because they will be allowed to earn more on those assets than the cost of the debt to fund those assets. So you'll typically see these utility companies with a ton of debt. Most all of them run a ton of debt because it costs them a ton of money to expand, but they're often, I don't want to say guaranteed, but almost guaranteed a return on that capital spend. So they do dish out quite a bit of quite a bit of money. And I mean, again, as I mentioned, it just creates an environment where the utilities profits are all but guaranteed. And this is why you see Fortis, I think 52 straight years of dividend growth now. And it's often in line with that rate-based growth. I mean, 4 to 5% a year,

they pump the dividend by, you know, 4 to 5% as well. And you're not gonna find a lot of stocks on the market that provide as consistent and predictable returns as regulated utilities. So this is why I would have it on the list. There will be periods of time where they lag, usually higher interest rates. I mean, these companies are kind of bond proxies

in that regard. They tend to do worse when interest rates are high because a lot of people, when fixed income is yielding 4.5%, they don't really wanna take on the equity risk of owning a utility that yields a little bit more than that. But you take, for instance, right now with interest rates dropping, they're up 25% over the last year. But largely what you're going to see,

this is going to level out to be the dividend payment plus three, four, 5% appreciation every year on average. I mean, obviously year to year, it's pretty volatile, but it's a boring stock. But you know, there's something to be said about a low beta option with almost guaranteed future earnings growth. And I mean, it's interesting to keep in mind up until this last bull run in 2023, 2024, Ford has was keeping pace with the S&P 500. So it's definitely not, you know, a very slow grow. It's probably not gonna be like, blow your socks off here in terms of overall returns,

but it's done quite well. Yeah, yeah, I mean, utilities will probably still be required 10 years down the line. So I think that's a good choice. And before I get to my last choice, people will probably notice that we haven't really picked any tech plays. And I don't't know about you but the reason for me and the next name is not a

tech play, it's gonna be a little bit of a play on the infrastructure but the reason for it is with AI it's changing so quickly. Yeah. And I don't have confidence even for big tech that in what their business is going to look like a decade down the line. I just don't know. They could thrive like they could something could really come up that disrupts one or all of them. It's really hard to know. And that's why I would not hold any of those companies with my eyes closed for the next 10 years just because I think there is a lot of potential for disruption Yeah, again, like if you're if you're choosing them with you know, you cannot look for the next 10 years I mean, there's so much disruptive technology in tech. It would be hard to pick one

I mean you you could say like let's say an Nvidia but there's there's no guarantee that a company like Nvidia doesn't get disrupted over the next decade or so. I mean you could have looked to a company like Adobe who is doing quite well and then AI comes along and you know AI is having a big impact on their business right now. I mean there's cheaper alternatives that effectively provide the same service so I mean I think that's why I didn't choose a technology company because I couldn't say for certain that in the next decade that the tech would still be relevant. I mean, I think that's why I didn't choose a technology company, because I couldn't say for certain that in the next decade, that the tech would still be relevant. I mean, no matter what the size. Yeah, no, exactly. That's the same reason. So I just wanted to address that because my last name is quanta services,

ticker PWR. Were you familiar with this business or no? When I brought it up, I think you know, yeah, I was supposed to turn into that episode I would have liked to tune into it. But yeah, I don't know the company very well. That's okay I mean I won't do a big overview. Obviously. These are more like kind of not thematics, but almost like You want to look at big long-term trends? That's kind of the way I was looking at it And for those not familiar with it, you can just go back to our episode 500 where a Braden joins. I did a Medium dive I would say so I explained a bit more what the company was and the company provides engineering and construction Services that can be broken down in three buckets. There is electric power infrastructure

services so installation upgrade maintenance and repair of electric power transmission and distribution infrastructure. There's oil and gas infrastructure services, so pipeline and industrial facility construction, maintenance and upgrade services, and communication infrastructure services, installation of maintenance of fiber optics and wireless communication. So this to me is the way I would play AI over the next 10 years without it playing AI. So it's basically... Kind of like a servicing company. Yeah, exactly. I think a company that will, has a strong chance of benefiting from the AI buildup and should benefit from that in most probable outcomes. I would say obviously

nothing is guaranteed but I'd be pretty confident with closing my eyes and Quanta being a much larger company over the next decade. Just because a lot of these things I just talked about so electric power infrastructure our grid will need to be upgraded in North America and in a lot of countries to be frank, to be able to really be able to sustain that increased demand, that increased power consumption, that humanity historically as always use more and more power. But I think we're going to see that going up into the right. Grant that. Yeah, exactly. In the next power, but I think we're gonna See that going up into the right Yeah, exactly in the next decade and I think they'll go they're gonna benefit oil and gas infrastructure. That's pretty simple. There's been

Chronic under investment in oil and gas infrastructure for the last probably five to ten years ever since that big Kind of boom from the early 2010s prices have been lower, which is a disincentive. But again, we need all the energy we can get. And to sustain that energy consumption, we're going to need all different forms of energy, oil and gas, nuclear, hydro, you name it, we will likely need it going forward. So I think it's another way that they would benefit from that increased demand in part from AI and then communication infrastructure services. Well, I mean, let's say I built on it is built on to work off of the Internet. So I think that will continue to be built out as well in the coming decade. So I think as a picks and shovel kind of play for AI,

I think quantum services makes a whole lot of sense and they should do well without being like directly involved in AI like the big tech companies. I think they should do well as the infrastructure around AI is being built out. Yeah, there's probably a lot less disruption in the maintenance repairing of the infrastructure around AI is being built out. Yeah, there's probably a lot less disruption in the maintenance, repairing of the infrastructure needed to fuel it rather than the technology itself. Yeah, exactly. It's just... It's gonna be... Yeah, there's a lot less disruption here, whereas, especially with what we're seeing now, you're like new AI companies and of course the

hyperscalers it's a bit different but you're seeing left right and center you mentioned Adobe we're starting we're gonna be posting more videos on YouTube and one tool that we've started using is Descript which compared to Premiere Pro I mean it's not yeah it's good, huh? Yeah, like we cancelled Premiere Pro. So I mean, that's what I mean by the disruption in terms of Adobe. Like a huge tech company. We used Premiere Pro for years and then you told us about Descript, we used it and we're like, oh my God, we can edit videos in half the time for half the cost.

So I mean, yeah, that's just it. Well, and I guess Alphabet would be another one. I mean, I own Alphabet, but I mean, there's a lot of, you know, search is changing. I mean, the one thing I have confidence in the fact that Alphabet can find a way around it, but I mean, not a lot of people, like traditional Google search,

I mean, there is no doubt that's falling. There's no question. It's dropping, but yeah. No, it's funny, Descript, I mean, I'm sure there's less, if you're really skilled video editor I'm sure there's more stuff you can do with the Adobe Premiere Pro, but for the most part I mean if you've ever looked at editing video and you've never looked at the script look at it because it Probably has like, you know, I'm not an expert on it

But from first-land you can probably do like 90% of the I'm not an expert on it, but from first-land, you can probably do like 90% of the stuff you can do on Adobe Premiere Pro. And it's so much easier to learn. It's way more intuitive, takes maybe four or five hours to like, watch tutorials to really get like all the functionalities. And you'd be like, you know, with a bit of practice you'll become, you'll be able to create some content almost like a pro. So yeah, that one and we did the same.

We canceled the Adobe Premiere Pro subscription we had. So yeah, yeah, there's a lot of disruption in tech. It's I don't think it's an industry right now you can buy and close your eyes for the next decade, no matter how big the company. No, exactly. And it's just so hard to say. Like there might be some that we think now that could get disrupted and you know what? They'll thrive. It's just so hard to say. So that's why, you know, I think I'll speak for you that we both stayed away from those kind of plays in these two names. But no, it was your idea to do this segment. It was pretty fun.

We just obviously didn't go drill into the financial statements really much for these company just because, I mean, it's more of a holistic view of the next 10 years. So I don't think it would have been that useful to go deep into the numbers, but still pretty fun. If you, if you, our listeners enjoyed us, let us know. Maybe we can do a few more segments like this in the future. I think it's a good point to end it. Thanks everyone for listening and we will be back for another episode this Thursday. The Canadian Investor podcast should not be construed as

investment or financial advice. The hosts and guests featured may own securities or assets discussed on this podcast. Always do your own due diligence or consult with a financial professional before making any financial or investment decisions.