The Canadian Investor - 7 Stocks We Sold Too Early… And Still Regret

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

In this episode of The Canadian Investor Podcast, we share some of our biggest investing mistakes: stocks we owned, sold too early, and watched soar afterward. From Apple Inc. to Alphabet Inc., Shopify Inc., Brookfield Corporation and more, we break down why we sold, what we learned, and how those experiences shaped our investing philosophy today. We also discuss the emotional side of investing, why patience matters, and how short-term thinking can destroy long-term returns. Plus, we react to Lululemon Athletica Inc. hiring a former Nike, Inc. executive as CEO and whether the selloff could create an opportunity for investors. If you’ve ever sold a stock too soon, this episode is for you. Tickers of stocks discussed: AAPL, GOOGL, SHOP, BN, BIP, BEP, FFH, PWR, LULU, NKE, ATZ, AAPL, OVV Subscribe to our Our New Youtube Channel! 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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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. I'm Simon Belanger and as always I'm joined by Dan Kent. We have a fun episode today so we're going to talk about stocks we sold too early. So these stocks that we used to own and then we think about not, well, not so fondly because we made the mistake of selling them too early. So maybe we curl up at night and cry a little bit because we would be much richer if we had not sold these stocks. So it's going to be a fun one.

Also, I feel like everyone's had a situation that has been investing for at least a few years where they owned the stock, sold too early and now, and then the stock just started or kept running after them selling. Yeah, you know, a lot of these, I kind of thought I was smart, I guess, when I sold them. But, I mean, looking back at it, especially doing these notes, I kind of realized some of them are way back in the past. So obviously, I can't remember my exact mental state back then. but a lot of these just ended up being kind of very bad decisions mostly. Like I guess a few that'll go over panic driven decisions. But yeah, it should be a good episode because it kind of reinforces, you know, more of a long-term approach to investing in general because a lot of the ones that I go over are going to be.

I mean, you'll see it when I go over them, but a lot of them are just not good decisions overall as to why I decided to move on. Yeah. And I mean, investing at the end of the day, it's hard. to completely remove emotions. So I think it'll be useful for our listeners just to understand that, look, you will be feeling emotions when you're investing. It's sometimes easier said than none to just buy a company, buy an ETF, whatever it is, and just hold it no matter what.

It's very easy, especially nowadays with headlines, with social media, to feel that emotional need to sell a position or buy a position, whatever it is, right? That fear kind of kicks in. So I think it's really good that we're going to talk about some mistakes we did. And it's perfectly, I think normal for investors and just being aware of those emotions and trying to stay the course and not make any rash decision. So I'll get started here. I'll start with Apple. And I know your first name on the list will be Apple as well.

So I sold Apple way too early. I had bought it in 2012 and then sold it in early. or probably more late 2013, and I'm just going on memory here, mostly because I had a different broker, so I don't have the data to look at anymore. So I'm just going on memory here. The reason why I sold wasn't really that emotional, maybe to some extent, because it was to buy a house that I bought back in 2013. And that ended up being a huge financial black hole for me. I actually did an episode, maybe a year or two ago, it was a solo episode where I talked about

the biggest financial mistake I had ever made, and that was the starting point of that. Without rehashing that mistake, I essentially did some poor planning, did some renovation, ended up racking some debt, and later on I had to make the decision to actually get a consolidation loaned. But to be able to buy that house, I had some money that was invested in Apple stock, so I had to sell those shares, and I ended up losing 30,000 or so. on that home when it was all set and done, when I factored in all the money I put in. I don't have the exact time frame, like I said, but if I had just kept the stock that I had and kept it until I sold the home back in 2019, I would have made more than 20% on my investment

compared to losing 40% on the, I guess, the money I put into that home. I guess that's the way I'll put it. And if I held Apple to this day, then it would have been almost 1,700% returns crushing, completely crushing the SNP 500 during that time frame. And it's even worse for me when I factor in the debt I took on, the interest I paid on that debt, and the fact that I was too cash-strapped to really invest for a few years after that because I was putting all the money to pay down that debt, which I did very quickly. I think I did in a year or two instead of six years. But again, it was a compounding effect. So in the end, this probably cost me a couple hundred thousand dollars, if not more. So it was pretty large mistake. Again, the emotions was probably the fact that I really wanted to buy a home, a new house. And maybe in hindsight I should have waited, been a bit more patient or even rented.

Yeah, I kind of had a similar situation back during that time too. I did end up buying a condo, but I mean, I guess like, I don't know, I kind of always grew up thinking like real estate was kind of the thing you wanted to be in back then. I mean, I held that condo. It's the Canadian way, don't you know that? Yeah, it is the Canadian way. And I mean, I held my condo from, I think it was 2011 until I sold it after a renter ended up trashing the place. But I mean, here in Alberta, especially like money would have been much better spent in the S&P 500 or Apple or whatever it may be than real estate. But yeah, that's like a, that's a double whammy, the lost upside plus the hit to the home price. No, exactly. So that that's my first. So what's your first? I have a

feeling it's the same company. So I had Apple as well. It's a bit actually, it's a lot different of a situation. I was I was pretty new to investing back then. I think I was probably two or three years into it. So a lot of my strategy back then was kind of, I don't know, the Peter Lynch strategy of, you know, kind of owning what you know and use, which, I mean, I don't think is a very good strategy. I'm very glad that I moved away from that. Like, there's a ton of things I use in my everyday life that would be bad investments. But that said, I mean, Apple should have just been one that I kept. If you've been investing that long, like if you go back to, what would it be late 2011, early 2012, like Apple had a huge. run coming out of the financial crisis then but then by when did Steve Jobs pass away it was probably

2011 yeah I mean Tim Cook came as CEO in August of 2011 yeah and it was very quick actually was editing videos for posting on our YouTube channel by and by the way for those aren't subscribe make sure you do there's short clips from the podcast along with some visuals that we are posting and as I was editing I was trying to find some old articles from back then. I did find some and it came as a big surprise. It wasn't really announced. It looked like it was just Steve Job is stepping down and I'm pretty sure he passed away relatively quickly. I think he really pushed it to the end. So yeah, I'll I'll look it up while you keep talking. Yeah. So back then like when that happened and Cook took over

like a lot of the innovation success was kind of tied to. two jobs. So I kind of remember. So just, I found the info. So he, Tim Cook took over on August 24, 2011 and Steve Job passed away on October 5th, 2011. Yes. It was like right after. So it was six weeks later. That's pretty crazy. I vaguely remember it was pretty quick. I didn't realize it was this quick. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't think so. Like this is a long time ago. It's crazy 14 years ago already. But there was a lot of commentary about how kind of Apple's days as this revolutionary company were behind them. And there was kind of a lot of fears.

I remember that, you know, the smartphone area, like that was right when all those different types of smartphones were coming out that it would kind of be a race to the bottom. And I had also read a ton of reports on how kind of significantly under, undervalued Apple was over that time frame. My buys in 2012. So I ended up buying the company in 2012. They were effectively like dead money for three, four years.

Like Apple did not do very well. And I mean, back then, I wouldn't have really had the confidence in my buys nor the patience to continue holding again. Like my philosophy back then was like, I owned an iPhone so I should buy Apple stock. Like there wasn't too much in depth going on back then. But I do remember when it got back to even or at least slightly profitable. I really, I couldn't wait to get rid of it because when it goes nowhere for three or four years, you know, I ended up selling my position. I think I was up like 50%. And I think this was probably one of the biggest mistakes I have made.

I mean, there's plenty of stocks I've moved on from recently that were kind of rooted in, you know, me losing confidence or, you know, some sort of thesis breaking news or earnings or whatever maybe. But this one was nothing more than like a, well, you know, it did nothing for four years. So 50% profit is is pretty good. So kind of a bad thinking, bad mentality. Like if I had held that Apple position in my T. If I say it would be much, much larger than it was today. I mean, I sold Apple for 50% profit. If I would have held on, it would be up almost 1,200% today. So it's kind of one of the results that has, you know, kind of resulted in me being much more patient today. So I mean,

I guess that's a glass half full take from being out probably a large amount of money. Yeah. And I think we've talked about it before. I think when you invest, you have to be comfortable with regret. You're going to have regret every investor, no matter how good they are, they will make some moves that just don't pan out. Warren Buffett has had some moves that don't really pan out. Bill Ackman, you name it, whichever well-known investor, it's going to happen. And I think at the end of the day, just getting some lessons for that is really important. And I think we're both the same philosophy. We try to invest more long term. I do a decent amount. of moves, but usually it's just kind of trimming on the edges and just not any major two rash

decision kind of move. So that's my philosophy now. And I assume just based on what I've seen from your portfolio, I think it's pretty similar, right? Yeah, I'm fairly stubborn now. I mean, I guess to a downfall in some situations, but at most situations, it does pay off just kind of sticking the long term and holding versus just selling because of some arbitrary number, which in my next one is probably a worse mistake, but I'll let you go over number two, your second. Having cash on hand is essential for any business. Traditional business accounts hit you with high fees while paying little to no interest on the cash you need for day-to-day operations.

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So I really went on a mix of looking at my actual trades and looking back on what I sold in that time frame. But before that, a lot of it was more on memory. So this one is fairly recent. So Alphabet I sold on September 13, 2023. This one hurts quite a bit because Google is up 150% right. roughly in just two and a half years since I sold. So that's really, really solid, definitely beating the market. I still made about 60% on it in about a year because I had bought the position the fall of 2022. And if people remember, everything was kind of crashing at that point in terms of tech.

Yeah, it was very ugly, tagged Bitcoin. Everything was way down. And the reason I sold in 23 was simply because I really thought AI would start massively disrupting Google search engine moat and that advertising revenue would decline. And since then, Google search engine revenue has increased 43%. So it's done pretty well. YouTube has continued to be an absolute beast as a streaming platform with revenues going up 44%. Total revenues have increased 49%. They've really surprised me and I think a lot of people of how much of a leader they've become in the AI space, really embracing that with Gemini. And I was definitely wrong with that one,

but I was still comfortable with my reasoning at the time. It's really easy to look back now with 2020 hindsight and say, okay, I made a really bad mistake. Of course, if I had a time machine, I would have kept that position. But at the end of the day, I think it was very real that there were some massive risk to Google's mode, especially the search engine type of deal. And you kept hearing rumors that they were literally panicking inside of Google on what the potential impact. And then they just decided to start embrace it because they had a lot of work done already with AI on their end.

So they started releasing their models. And now, as we can see, it's done quite well. Well, the one caveat I will say is their free castle is kind of stagnated because they're spending so much on CAPEX. So that is the one thing where I think, you know, I'm not sure where it goes from here. And again, I would not own it because I just don't have enough conviction. So happy to be on the sideline. So yes, I wish I would have kept it. But at the same time, I don't really regret it.

I think my reasoning was fine back then. Of course, looking at the percentage. Yes, I regret it on that standpoint. But I'm actually happy with the process I had back then. Yeah, I mean, as long as the thought process is right, I mean, you're going to be wrong the odd time. I mean, it's going to happen no matter what. At least, you know, it was kind of rooted in some sort of, you know, cell theory about issues in the future. I kind of took the reverse element of alphabet here.

I was buying at that time just because I had been so involved in the space. I mean, not so much anymore because, you know, AI, generative AI queries on Google or through the roof. But our website used to rely a lot on Google. And the massive amount of changes that you've seen from like 2023 to to 2024 was just crazy. And it was clearly evident that they were going to, you know, if you were involved in the space, they were going to try to roll out some sort of platform.

And then, you know, there was the issues about how they'd monetize it. And, you know, obviously that's not a. issue right now, but it's hard to bet against this company at any point. Like YouTube crushes it. I mean, their models are crushing it. Google search is still, I mean, ad rates are going up and they're continuing to grow at a at a crazy pace. But the tech is interesting. Like, nobody knows what's going to happen in five years with this type of stuff. So it's more difficult now than ever before. Okay. So if you're done making me feel bad about it, do you want to go to your next name? I had to tell you. I was buying what you were selling. I was buying.

Okay, okay. You were right. Move on. Tell me about the mistake you made, the next one. So Shopify. So this would be, you know, after the mistake with Apple and probably a lot of smaller ones I made, like these, a lot of these are like you had mentioned. They're mostly off memory. Like I don't have any actual like P&L impacts, but I just know that they were large. But you would think that I would be beyond obsessing over profits and losses at that point in time. but I own Shopify from June.

It was mid to early 2018 to about June of 2020. So I don't remember the entire situation here that was during the midst of the pandemic. But one thing I do remember is I was up around 500%. So that was kind of a benchmark number for me where I felt comfortable exiting. And I think my main idea here during this time frame was the fact that Shopify was moving up too much too fast. So my position had moved up around 120% from the bottom of the pandemic crash, like that March crash when stocks just bombed. And that was over the course of like three, four months.

So I mean, I don't beat myself up for this one too much because for one, I think my logic was correct here just a bit too early. So obviously we all remember in late 2021 Shopify dumped like what was it. It was like 80 or 85% massive drawdown on it. But I ended up booking process. profits of 500%, whereas if I had held the stock, I'd be up around 1,200%. And I don't feel as bad about this one because for a long period of time, I would have pretty much seen most of my gains wiped out.

It would have been interesting to see how much I have actually lost on this early sale. Like, I can't remember what I ended up buying with the proceeds of the sale. If that position is up, it might mitigate some of the losses here. But I mean, I guess the point here is I had a very long-term outlook. look for a company like Shopify and I kind of let the profits get in the way. I mean, that 500% number was just, you know, was a nice number to me. I did have substantially more investing experience in 2020 than I did back in 2012, but still kind of made same pretty big mistake. I mean, what I should have done, what I should have done primarily because there wasn't really

anything about the thesis that had changed for me whatsoever in regards to Shopify. I probably should have just held the position and accumulated shares during the drawdown. And, I can't remember the exact number of shares I own, but I'm pretty sure I had around 50 shares, give or take a couple. And that was pre-split. So they did a 10 to 1 split. So I probably would have had around 500 shares today. So it was a big mistake. That's like, what would 500 shares of shop if I be worth today? I think they're around 170 bucks a share. It's around $85,000. So yeah. Yeah, which again, I can't remember what I bought with the sale. So it's not like, it's just a big punt of that money, but yeah. And sometimes a good idea too, just food for thought. There's no like

necessarily math logic behind it, but more psychological logic. Sometimes for people who are looking at big gains is just, I've heard that before as you just sell to cover your cause basis. So if you put like five grand or ten grand in this company, so and now you've five X to 50, well, I'll just take sell 10 and then let the profits roll. So I think that can have a good psychological effect in terms of helping you hold for the long term. I've heard many people do that. And it's not like there is any kind of mathematical play behind it, but it does help you not panic sell. So something to consider for people sometimes we'll see that, yeah, that big return number and they just want to take their profit.

it, you know, you could sell what you put in or just you trim, right? I've been a big proponent of just trimming when a position gets too large. For me, it's more on position sizing than anything, but another approach would be that. Yeah, and I've done this a lot recently with company like Eritzia. That's more so because the industry it's in, but I've kind of taken profits off the top there while holding the company. But yeah, it's all dependent a lot on allocations as well. But yeah, what's your next one?

Yeah, so my next one here, Fairfax Financial. So not a company we've talked a lot on the podcast. I know the people who own this company really love it. For those not familiar, it's an insurance company. They'll also use part of their flow to invest in companies, a bit like Berkshire, but they tend to do more private deals, if I remember correctly. I think they bought a stake in Blackberry and Toys R Us in Canada. some more names as well.

So I don't remember the exact timeline. Again, this was with my previous broker. So I just took in terms of date of when I sold, I'm pretty sure it was in 2019. So I put June 13, 2019, just as a random date to look at the numbers here. And Fairfax is up 33% since that date, almost a double in terms of the returns

compared to the SNP 500. and there were two reasons why I sold the first one. I found the business quite complex to understand. So it's not like I had the strongest conviction to begin with. And the second was really that I had owned it for a few years and the really, the company didn't really go anywhere for that time frame. I think it was probably slightly up or slightly down. Don't fully remember here.

And again, the time frame is more on memory. I understood the business as a whole, but the insurance. companies are just really complex, right? You almost have to be an expert to really understand it. I'm sure there's a lot of investors that have money and insurance companies and don't, they know kind of the general idea behind it, but it gets really, really complex. It's just like the big Canadian banks, right? Like, yes.

I've yet, I've yet to meet an investor who like truly understands all the plumbing of the Canadian banks because it just gets super complicated. I think most people understand them as a whole, even the different business lines. At the end of the day, that was the reason for me selling. Again, very comfortable with selling. It's a reason why I sold Constellation Software recently. It's just because I didn't have enough conviction in the actual future of the business. I sold it because if you ask me, where is Constellation going?

I'm being perfectly honest. They could do well with AI. It could be a tail win or it could be a headwin and it could struggle if I'm thinking two, three, four years down the line. and then when I don't have enough conviction, to me, it's an easy sell for a company, even if the company goes on and have some massive returns. Yeah, I think, like I own insurance companies. I have, I don't want to say I have like in-depth expert, you know, knowledge of them. I don't think a lot of people do because, again, you mentioned they're insanely complex.

The banks are even on another level. Fairfax, like, I know they take a lot more. turnaround place, I guess you could say. Yeah. Blackberry, I'm pretty sure they recently bought Sleep Country, which used to trade on the TSX as well. Yeah. But yeah, I, I know this is kind of a founder bed as well. Like, they call it the kind of the Canadian Berkshire, but. Yeah. Yeah. Again, like it. Yeah. Yeah. It's insanely complex businesses. And I mean, if you don't, if you don't understand it, then it's easiest to move on. because if you don't understand it, you're not going to know what to do when, you know, it drops or whatever it may be.

No, exactly. So happy I sold it in the end, even despite the returns. But, yeah, that was mine. What's your next one here? So New Vista Energy. And this was actually a company that I ended up buying on. We had highlighted it over on our platform in mid-2019. So I bought it around $2.50 a share.

and generally I will buy most of the stocks that I highlight over there. So this was a natural gas play. And it was one that was very dirt cheap back in 2019. And from what I remember back then, gas prices were kind of in the gutter. And the company was transitioning from being kind of a legacy gas producer to more of a liquids producer. So they were spending a ton of money outpacing cash flows, if I remember correctly. And, you know, an investment back then was kind of. of one in the successful transition.

So that's kind of why I ended up taking a position. And the theory here is the spend would be finished. Cash flows would kind of flip positive and they'd be able to de-leverage. So obviously the pandemic put a gigantic wrench into this plan. And I can't remember the exact, you know, paper loss I was on, but I'm pretty sure at one point I was in the hole by like 80, 85%. It was it was absolutely wild. And this was one of my only, you know, forays into like the junior oil and gas market. I haven't bought another one since.

And I just wanted nothing more than to get out of this company. So I ended up selling New Vista for, I think it was around $3 a share. So I made a bit. But it's better than the 25 cents are so low that I can see here. Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was ugly. I might have been down 90 plus percent. It was, you know, I sold it for $3 a share.

So I made a little bit. And, you know, I kind of never felt better at that time. I mean, I thought it would have been dead money. And, you know, at the time I actually held Ancana, which is now Oventive, another natural gas producer and New Vista. And both these companies just got obliterated. I think I was down over 95% on Oventive. And I mean, when I got to that point, I kind of took the mentality of, you know what, I'm already down 95%. I'm actually just going to hold this one.

So I ended up selling. I sold OVinty for a profit. So that just shows you how much that stock ran and all these energy stocks ran, you know, post-pandemic, I guess I should say, like kind of in the midst of it. And I will admit, I didn't pay much attention to New Vista's operations post-sale. But if I'm going to guess that transition worked out wonderfully, like my initial thesis was spot on because I'm pretty sure the company was just bought by OVintiv for $2.7 billion. So it would have been around $18 a share. So this would have been around a 600% gain for me if I had held.

And I mean, if I were to pinpoint an error here, it would mostly be, you know, the substantial downwards volatility during the pandemic that kind of got me to, I don't want to say panic sell, but just kind of exit the space. And it's also like I am far from an expert in the oil and gas sector. So I know the majors to a certain degree, but I don't really focus on a lot of these tiny junior players. So as soon as I took that 80, 90, whatever it may be hit in such a short amount of time, I just wanted nothing more to exit. And it was a very poor exit.

Now that said, I don't know if I would have held this one up until the acquisition. So, you know, I don't want to say I would have gained 600%. I probably would have exited at some other time. But yeah, it did exceptionally well over the last while. Yeah. No, it's done pretty well. But at the end of the day, there was a lot of people panicking when COVID started. So especially in the oil and gas sector.

So you're not, you're not alone. And even like big play big mature companies like Canadian natural resources and Suncor were having some trouble there. So in terms of stock price, the companies were fine. But just to give people some perspective. Well, I kind of knew that the bottom of the pandemic was way too overdone, which is why I didn't dump it at 50 cents a share or whatever it may be. held on to it. I just didn't think that all those energy companies would run up as much as they did. And I still kind of got a piece of it because I exited New Vista and bought into XEG, like the energy energy ETF. So it's not like I got out of the space entirely. I just did not want to own

this individual name for sure. Yeah. I mean, you went to the lower volatility place. So I can definitely understand that. So the next one here on the slate is Brookfield. So Ticker BN, the mothership, so Brookfield Corporation. This one I sold the shares on October 24, 2023. The stock has returned 130% since. Now, to be fair, I still own BIP and BEP, so Brookfield Infrastructure Partners and Brookfield Renewable Partners. And those were definitely larger position than Brookfield Corporation for me, although I wish I would have kept those shares, it still doesn't stink too much because it wasn't a huge sizing. And the main reason I sold was because I just didn't love some of the exposure that Brookfield Corporation has. Specifically, you may remember, but right after

the pandemic, they rolled up, they bought all the units from Brookfield property partners, which contains a whole lot of commercial real estate. And at the time, I was like, you know what, I prefer owning allied property reed because I thought overall they had better commercial and office real estate. At the end of the day, I lost some money on that too. But that was kind of my reasoning at the time. And the other reason is pretty simple. I've talked about it on X or Twitter. And people are very passionate about Brookfield Corporation. But it remains that it's a, it's a very complex business to understand. Like all the different stakes it has and its various subsidiaries,

even like sometimes the debt is structured a bit weird. When you look at Brookfield Corporation, the debt tends to be like super high, but most of the debt is tied to specific assets. And then you get also into the asset management business, private equity, private credits, some of the reinsurance that they bought in the last few years. So for me, that's always been my biggest thing with Brookfield Corporation is just I have trouble fully understanding how the business works and the risk associated with it.

They rely a whole lot on models for valuations. I don't have any reason to not trust them from that perspective, but it does require a whole lot of trust. Same thing from Brookfield infrastructure and Brookfield Renewable Partners, but there's just less moving. parts when it comes to those two. And they have much more like hard assets tied to those two and that type of assets that I'm more comfortable with. So it sucks from a returns perspective, but I'm still perfectly fine with the reasoning behind it. Yeah, it seems like there's no like middle ground for this company.

If you go on X or something, it's either like people love it. Shorting it. Yeah. Understand it entirely. Or they think it's a complete house of cards kind of waiting to, waiting to collapse. It's probably like, no one fully understands Brookfield. No. I'm sorry, but I've seen people who said, yeah, they understand it well.

And then I ask them some questions and they're like, oh, well, you know, they provide this and blah, blah, blah. But, you know, at the end of the day, you trust that what they're providing you is accurate. And oftentimes it's based on models. They also have the reinsurance business. I believe it's incorporated in the Bermudas. So there's just, I'm not saying there's any. anything bad going on. I'm just saying that there's a whole lot of stuff that you can't really verify and that makes me nervous and it's extremely complex structure too. So to me, it's just that's

enough for me not feeling comfortable owning it and I'll probably look stupid five to 10 years down the line again. Well, I mean, at least you have a piece of the subsidiaries. I mean, the physical assets, like they're a little bit easier to understand for sure. Yeah. Having cash on hand is essential for any business. Traditional business accounts hit you with high fees while paying little to no interest on the cash you need for day-to-day operations. That was our experience too, until we switched to the new EQBank business account. Now, every dollar earns high interest with no monthly fees and no minimum balance.

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Blossom social in the app store, and I'll see you there. There is an old saying in investing. It's not about timing the market, but time in the market. The most successful investors aren't usually the ones trying to catch every top and bottom. They're the ones who spend the most time in the market. I've been a quest trade user for over five years, and the reason I stick with them is that they remove the friction of regular investing. With no commissions on stock and ETF trades,

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your investment strategy, not trying to avoid fees. Ready to invest, head over to questray.com, open and fund your account with code TCI and receive $50. Conditions apply. You want to go over your final one? Yeah, that last one, I mean, it was more of an honorable mention. So this one was Quanta Services. It's something I did a semi-dive, kind of deep dive on it last year, about a year or so ago. I think it was on around April of last year, if I remember correctly,

it was trading at around 30 times earnings and free cash flow at the time. Well, since April 16 of last year, so I just took April 16 as a random date there. Quanta services is up 125% and it's been just writing that electrification and AI tailwinds ever since. So not a company that I sold, but I was extremely close to buying it. I remember like doing the research for the dive I did into it and really loving what I was seeing and just not pulling the trigger because I thought it was a bit too expensive and now it's trading I think around like 45, 50 without having it in front of me. So it's been really on a tear and will probably continue because I don't think that electrification theme is going

away anytime soon. Yeah, this is kind of one. This is one I dug into after we did the segment on it and I do regret not buying. It's kind of, you know, you just look at the valuation multiple. You think it's too expensive. But I mean, to a certain degree, the market is is pretty efficient at pricing these companies for the most part. And there was a ton of tailwinds here that I just kind of ignored because, you know, you look at that big multiple. You don't really want to pay it because you think it's going to tank and it just never does. I mean, it could. But. Yeah, it could. Yeah, it's got a ton of tailwinds moving forward. It's up forward. It's up 44% year to date.

Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. I mean, it's trading at even a Ford P and Ford Price to Free Cash flow of like 47. So at the end of the day, like, I think things are getting a bit frothy here and it's a trade that a lot of people are doing. So I would not be surprised if cooler heads prevail and we see a pullback just because the multiples have just been a bit crazy. I'm not saying like 30. 35 on a Ford basis would be outrageous, but 45, it's getting pretty rich. Like, it's growing

nicely and generating a lot of free cash. But I'm not sure if that's fully justified. So, but again, I'll just like Brookfield, I'll probably be proven wrong here. It's what we said a year ago, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I guess because we still have another five, 10 minutes, we wanted to talk about some big news that happened for a Canadian name here. So Lou Lemon, it came out today, actually, or maybe last night. I'm not quite sure. So we're recording this on April 23rd that Lou Lemon has found a new CEO. So they hired someone from a former executive from Nike.

Your name is Heidi O'Neill. And on the news, I'm going to say it's probably because she worked at Nike. Yeah. The stock is down, what, 11, 12% right now? I don't have it exactly in front of me, but the market is definitely not loving it. Clearly, Nike has been not performing very well. And I'm just looking up her LinkedIn profile here just to get a sense of where she's been. And we haven't done really any notes of we're just going off the cuff here.

So she's been a board member at Spotify since February of 2017. Not sure if she's going to be keeping those board seats. I would say probably not, but not quite sure. board member at Hyatt since 23. She's also a board member at Lithia and Driveway. Never heard of it. But she's a board member there. And her experience, she was

27 years at Nike. And I'll just go over the most recent roles she's had. So let's just say that starting in 2016 to 2020, she was a president of direct-to-consumer. Not exactly the best-performing area of

Nike. President of consumer and marketplace. from April 2020 to June 2023. And then Nike president consumer product and brand from 2023 to September of 2025 and she loved

the company after that. I believe she stayed on as like an advisor for the company. But again, the fact that she was at Nike and in some divisions that have not performed the best eater, clearly the market is not

loving that because they're probably seeing it okay well even though she might be very qualified for it they may not love the experience that she had or not necessarily love the experience but where the experience was acquired yeah isn't the direct to consumer for nike the exact thing they're trying to overhaul right now and kind of go back to to wholesale i believe so yeah um i'm just looking up uh here the direct to consumer stuff. Yeah, like they're trying to kind of flip it because that was generally a failure. They tried to, you know, they used to sell wholesale and then they went direct to consumer and pretty much over that time frame. Yeah, it started to get ugly and now they've kind of flipped it.

Yeah, performed pretty decently well until 2023 and then flatline in 2024 and now it's been declining over the last couple of years. So yeah, not. No, the best thing. And yes, their most recent calls, yeah, they're trying to focus more on wholesale. So reverting back to that. So, I mean, I guess she wasn't around when it started to fall because she was only there. No, she was still, yeah, around when DTC was doing much better. So it was still growing. I would assume that it maybe kind of fell under her when she was Nike president from 2023 to 2025. I'm not not quite sure. but I think at the end of the day, it's just a market reacting to that. It could be, I don't know what your thoughts are, but it could be a buying opportunity here because she may be like a very qualified person and crushed it in the interview process and the hiring process and really has a solid plan.

I feel like the market is just reacting to the headline and just the fact that she was at Nike. Yeah, I mean, how much of Nike's falls were management related or just, you know, maybe a consumer tightening up and kind of the the brand falling out. I mean, they're, they're only able to do so much, I could say, to some degree. Like obviously she's, she's very qualified. You don't put, what is it, nearly three decades into Nike without, you know, probably being a very smart person moving your way to the top there. But I don't really know enough about her to definitively say that she'll turn Lulu

Lemon around because Lulu Lemon definitely does need a big turnaround. We were talking about this before the recording, but Eritzia is pretty close to actually being larger than Lulu Lemon, which is just wild because, well, I don't know what a year, a year and a half ago, Lulu Lemon was probably 10 times the size of Eritzia. So what a massive swing. Yeah, I mean, I think Eritzia is a bit behind because you have to remember Lulu's traded on the New York stock. Yeah, US dollars. So there's that currency exchange, but it's not far off. I'd say it's probably 10, 20% away from overtaking Lulu Lemon. Yeah.

Yeah, it's fashion's a tough business. I mean, who knows? Obviously, they needed to do something, though, because, I mean, they had all those product assortment issues and it's kind of been a disaster. The last, what has it been 12, 18 months for the company? Yeah, I mean, the last year, it's down 46%. So it's in a big drawdown. I mean, to me, it's a company I've held in the past.

I can see why they are having trouble. I do find their products have stagnated a bit, but they still have overall sales are growing very nicely internationally. So it's not like it's a disaster everywhere. It's really in North America where they are struggling. And if they can turn that around even a little bit of growth in North America and keeping the margins, improving the margins, not having to rely on sales as much as they have over the last 12 to 18 months,

it could definitely be a really interesting company in terms of a value play because I'm trying to just going to pull it up here to see what it's trading at right now probably very cheaply. 13X is forward. Yeah, so Ford, price to earning of 11 and price to free cash flow at 13. So at some point, if the market becomes too bearish on this, like even if growth kind of stalls and it kind of continues on the path it is, and international keeps performing decently well. I mean, starting to get pretty attractive just on the free cash flow it generates. Yeah.

If she can turn it around, I mean, what had Lulu Lemon probably traded at more than double this valuation for a very long time? But I think they like same store sales in North America are shrinking. They definitely need to turn that around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. North America has been the toughest part for it for sure. Yeah. So anyways, I think that that will be interesting to keep an eye on. From that, I think that pretty much wraps it up. As a reminder for those who are not subscribed to Join TCI, we are putting some more video content on YouTube. Joint TCI still hosts all the full episodes.

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And we will be back next Thursday for a new news and earnings episode. The Canadian Investor Podcast should not be construed as investment or financial advice. The host and guest 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.