The Canadian Investor - The Most Bought Stocks by Canadian Investors

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

In this episode of the Canadian Investor Podcast, we dive into the latest trends and insights shaping the market. First, have a look at the TD Direct Investing Index which shows that investor sentiment is slightly bearish despite markets hitting all time highs. We look at the stocks that have been the most bought and sold by TD’s self-directed investors with some surprise names on the list. Switching gears, we share the results of a Twitter poll on the best personal finance hacks. We then talk about a listener’s question on when to trim a core position due to high valuation multiples, using Intuitive Surgical as a case study.   Lastly, we explore the concept of battleground stocks—those highly volatile and polarizing stocks that attract both passionate bulls and bears. Using examples like Tesla, Palantir, and Disney, we discuss the risks and rewards of investing in these contentious equities and share lessons learned from their market behavior. Tickers of Stocks & ETF discussed: TSLA, PLTR, DIS, NVDA, GME, TD, BCE.TO, SHOP.TO, AAPL, T.TO, SMCI, AMD Check out our portfolio by going to Jointci.com Our Website 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 Sign up for Finchat.io 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.

Welcome back into the show. This is the Canadian Investor Podcast, made possible by our friends and show sponsor, EQ Bank, which helps Canadians make bank with high interest and no fees on everyday banking. We also love their savings and investment products like GICs, which offer some of the best rates on the market. I personally, and I know Simone as well, is using the GICs, which offer some of the best rates on the market. I personally, and I know Simone as well, is using the GICs on a regular basis to set money aside for personal income taxes in April of every year. Their GICs are perfect because the interest rate is guaranteed, and I know I won't be able to touch that money until I need it for tax time. Whether you're looking to set some money aside for a rainy day or a big purchase is

coming through the pipeline or simply want to lower the risk of your overall investment portfolio, EQ Bank's GICs are a great option. The best thing about EQ Bank is that it is so easy to use. You can open an account and buy a GIC online in minutes. Take advantage of some of the best rates on the market today at eqbank.ca forward slash GIC. Again, eqbank.ca forward slash GIC. This is the Canadian Investor, where you take control of your own portfolio and gain the confidence you need to succeed in the markets. Hosted by Brayden Dennis and Simon Belanger. The Canadian Investor Podcast. Welcome into the show. My name is Brayden Dennis, as always joined by the exquisite Mr. Simon Belanger. Today on the show, you're going to talk about Canadian investor sentiment, what they're buying, what

they're selling, what's moving, what's hot. And then I'm going to talk a little bit about a personal finance poll I took, which is basically what are low effort, high reward personal finance hacks. You're going to talk about the valuation of intuitive surgical. And then I'm going to round out today's show with battleground stocks at the end. And if you're not familiar around with what a battleground stock is, then make sure you keep tuning in to the show. Simone, kick us off here with the first segment of the day. Yeah. So this segment, I think it'll be fun. We've done it quite a bit. So it's the TD Direct Investing Index. For those who are not familiar with it, I'll just kind of recap what it is.

It's essentially just a way for them, TD Direct Investing, for their clients to look at what is the most bought, sold, how people are trading, all different kind of things. different kind of things, a bit more short term, but I find it pretty fascinating just in terms of what it tells us of what Canadians specifically, because it's TD direct investing, what they're doing. And it kind of aligns with what we've been saying for the last little while in terms of the top names that have been bought at the very least. So I'll go over the list and then I'll provide some of the takeaways here. So first of all, their index, like I said, measures whether people are feeling bullish or bearish. To my surprise, they have it pretty neutral right now. I don't know about you, but are you surprised to see that it is kind of a neutral sentiment? I thought it would be just with the way markets are going. I thought it'd be a bit more bullish,

to be honest. Are we not at all-time highs right now? Pretty close to it. So that's why I like- If not right now, a few days ago, I'm just going to go on to SPY and go on price. And yeah, we're at all-time highs

as of recording today like so i i mean i don't know what's more like what's like how is this not extremely bullish i don't know if yeah if it's not now when is higher than neutral yeah i mean it could be right like i obviously depending on who you follow on fin twit for, what kind of media. Like, I follow a lot of people. I would say sentiment is definitely more bearish than bullish overall. But again, I'm also aware that that's not all of the investing population. And just based on what the markets are doing, at least the indices.

And I like we've talked about clearly it's being driven by a handful of stocks but I thought it would have been a bit higher and this is actually literally slightly embarrassed territory so it may be people that are seeing what worse we've been saying and just saying that look things look a bit you know dysfunctional right now in terms of you know hitting these all-time high just driven by just a handful of companies maybe people are just kind of seeing that it could take a turn for the worse at any moment I'm not quite sure but it's it it is a bit conflicting now I'll continue here go over the name so the most bought securities and this is for June 2024 so pretty recent so the first one are you surprised when I say Nvidia shocker so up from number two here uh

GME is up from number four at number two so clearly this is June this is June ending data June ending data so this one was a bit surprising. I didn't think it would be that high up, but I guess Roy and Kitty, you know, is just making Canadian investors FOMO a little bit into GME. The next one, TD, kind of, it's always in the top 10, I would say. Number four is Tesla. Number five, BCE.

And I'll give my, you know, my comments on that kind of the main takeaways in just a minute. Number five, BC. And I'll give my, you know, my comments on that kind of the main takeaways in just a minute. Number six, Shopify. Number seven, Apple. Apple actually up from number 18. So quite a big jump here. We have TELUS here at number eight, up from number 15. That's a pretty big jump.

Super microcomputer, not surprising in the number nine spot. Again, AI related and then AMD, I think, riding the AI hype as well. So those are the companies. I have four big takeaways here. So first of all, sentiment neutral, like I mentioned, surprising. I won't elaborate anymore, but it is a bit confusing to me just seeing how markets are doing and versus the sentiment. The most bought stocks are definitely a mixed bag. So I kind of put two and I would say two and a half categories here. So AI infrastructure slash tech. So whether you want to lump in here, kind of NVIDIA, Supermicro, AMD, feel free to put in Apple if you think it could be there.

I mean, it's less of an AI play, although I think they're trying to push it with putting AI on the iPhone coming up. But I think we've talked about that before. The next group here is high dividend yielders, I would say, slash laggards or deep value. So in this group, you have BCE, TELUS, and TD. BCE, we've talked about it at length recently. It's yielding over 9%. TELUS is yielding over 7%. TD is yielding over 5%. The reason I'm talking about yields here is I have a feeling the yield is what is driving investor interest in these stocks.

Do you agree with that? Do you disagree, Brandon? Those names are always popular with this group of self-directed accounts. Almost always. Some of these names are just commonly found on this list. It's like some of these high yielders, some of the big banks, always TDs very high on the platform of TD from potential bias from customers being familiar with their own bank.

Exactly. Not surprising, obviously, if you're familiar with a bank, you've had, let's say, relatively good experience. You're probably more open to owning the stock versus other banks. And then I guess the last group here is just the rest, which is a bit of a mixed bag. You know, we talked about GME being in there, Shopify, Tesla. Those two tend to be on the list.

Tesla is maybe a bit more of an AI play, but again, it's been up and down. They've been facing a lot of margin pressures. So it's still interesting to see them there. You have Apple, whether you want to put that in the AI infrastructure tech or not. But that's kind of the three big categories that I thought. And then the most sold stocks, it's pretty interesting. Again, this is more like what I wouldn't say like probably what people are doing that are not long-term investors would be my best guess i don't think they're owning these stocks

for like five ten years i think it's just a lot of people trading in and out but the most sold stock i won't go into super detail for each but number one again nvidia kind of shows the trading aspect gme again that trading aspect tesla td apple shopify at number six you have super micro computer at number seven amd at eight hut eight at nine which is up from number 30 and i'll mention why here and then you have amazon that, again, not overly surprising up from number 13. That's rounding up the top 10 here. I'd hate, I didn't expect to see it,

but as I saw it, it made a little bit of sense. I haven't dug into the company lately, but they had a huge jump in price in June. So I would think this is probably people just taking profits off the table that had been holding it for maybe just a few months or something like that. So just taking profits off, that would be my assumption. But overall, I mean, just interesting to look at what we saw. I did find something else, but that data point, I think there's an error in it. So in

terms of the asset and how it's allocated, you'll notice, Brayden, that'll probably jump out at you as well. So they're saying that cash and cash equivalents represent 35% of the portfolio. I think there's an issue with that part of their reports, because if you go back, it's actually been 35% since March but February was at 6% and the previous months were all 5 6% and a jump between February and March they give the month-over-month change and was like less than 1% so I feel like there's probably a little bit of an issue with the data there so I wouldn't draw too much conclusion without whether, you know,

the 6% was inaccurate back then or the 35 now, I'm not quite sure. So I wouldn't draw any conclusion in that. One of them is wrong. One of them is wrong. Exactly. Because they're saying the month over month change is less than 1%. And clearly it's going from six to 35. So clearly something's not lining up. Yeah, very interesting. I wonder which one it is. Yeah, I do wonder. Like I was kind of looking to contact them and just ask like, so what is the right figure here? Because 35% is extremely high. I mean, I think I have a pretty high allocation to cash and cash equivalents.

And I have between 10 and 15%. So 35% is very high, especially when you're looking at a direct investing, an online broker account, because that's what it is. If you're looking at other types of TFSA accounts or stuff like that, may not be that surprising. We know the stats. Yeah. Yeah. Because we've seen that time and time again, especially in big banks, you'll have a registered account like a TFSA, people hoarding it like a piggy bank in cash, getting waxed by inflation every year. That's a terrible way to use contribution room, but it's happening at scale due to maybe a lack of education, but also the fact that some of these banks are pretty pushy that you should open up an account, throw a bunch of cash in it, and they can go make their margin on it. So whatever one it is, with this direct investing account, I'm going to assume the previous lower number is the right one. That's what I would think. That would be my guess.

But if I find a way to contact them and ask them to clarify it, I'll talk about it again on another podcast. I'm not just saying this because they're a sponsor of the show. Although they are a sponsor of the show, I keep all my cash, like liquid bank account cash in EQ Bank. Because it's just so easy. The interest they pay you is just so much better than the big five or whatever you want to categorize in there. Yeah, exactly. I mean, their rates are some of the best out there.

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I am going to switch up the order of the show. Listen to your heart, go for it. Because a lot of those stocks are battleground stocks. In the top 10 of trading in a retail broker, typically a pretty good list of battleground stocks. Not all of them, but some of them for sure. Especially the ones that are basically always there, like for years. Those feel like battleground stocks. So I'm going to do our last segment second here because it was so relevant to the conversation that we just had. What is a battleground stock? Now, the Google search definition is these stocks are characterized by their high volatility, popularity among investors, and short interest by usually

professional investors. Personally, my thoughts on battleground stocks usually feel like they have cult-like retail followings, yet high institutional short interest. Does that feel like a good definition? Cult-like retail following, high institutional short interest. But they're not necessarily meme stocks. They don't have to be a meme stock to be a battleground. Chad GPT agrees with you. So I'll just say that. Okay. Diverging. Oh, yeah.

This is actually good. Diverging opinions. It's a substantial divide between bullish and bearish. Yes. Okay. Exactly what my notes are on here. I don't necessarily mean they're meme stocks, but they certainly have a similar feel with cult-like followings and a lot of short interest.

They're battleground stocks because they're fought over by bulls and bears regularly, and sentiment can swing and shift like the seasons. In my mind, no stock characterizes a battleground better than Tesla since it's been public. Tesla went public in 2010. It's felt like a battleground stock ever since. It's a stock that everyone has an opinion on. And during the business's rise to popularity, that's typically a battleground stock. Everyone has an opinion. And the volatility certainly checks out. I mean, drawdown history since they went public in 2010, you had, let me just count the peaks on the drawdown. So I went on FinChat.

I went on Tesla. I went to the price chart. I punched in the drawdown view. You had 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. 13 that I can just see right now, we're over 30%. A couple over 40%. We're in a 60 plus percent drawdown in most recent years. So this is not to say the stock hasn't done well over that time. If you zoom out since IPO, investors made a boatload of money, but it is characterized by extreme drawdowns and frequent drawdowns.

So my opinion on the run-up from 2018 to 2021 for Tesla was that the stock was valued like something it's not. And hey, I was wrong. I mean, I'm happy to admit that. I don't care. Don't worry. I was wrong. I mean, I'm happy to admit that. I don't care. Don't worry, I was wrong too. Yeah, a lot of people were. That's the thing about battleground stocks. There is passionate and intense feelings from both bulls and bears. The problem is one side is usually mega right and one side is usually mega wrong.

That's usually how these things go. Uber, when it went public, felt like a battleground stock. A lot of hard opinions. Not so much anymore. It's pretty consensus that it's a pretty hard business to compete with. Google in 2023 was a battleground. Palantir, most definitely defined by passionate shareholder base, to say the least. Dude, don't ruffle the Palantir shareholder feathers.

I have never really understood the business. It's really hard to learn about it. It's very big picture, big defense, big AI in their sales decks and transcripts that I'm just like, okay, but explain it to me like I'm five. Disney, maybe right now, is a bit of a battleground. It doesn't matter. Like it has no real comment on these stocks, but back to the Tesla example, I've learned a lot about battleground stocks from this example. And I've come down to three lessons that I've learned. One, having no opinion is completely fine. Two, you most definitely don't have to participate in the battle with your capital. And number three,

probably the most important learning for me is bulls have some valid points rooted in the extreme optimism. There's a lot of valid points. And bears have valid points rooted in their deep conviction and pessimism, hence why they're usually so short the stock. The truth is somewhere in the middle of the battleground, but that's what makes them so hard. Now, the problem for them and for my strategy personally lies in what I said early, which is usually one side is going to be mega right and usually one side's going to be mega right

and usually one side's going to be mega wrong. Bears short the stock, get wrecked. They get wiped out. We've seen this time and time again. Like how many hedge funds had to shut down with GameStop? Huge ones too. At least one, yeah. At least one, but I know a lot of them had pretty big losses.

They weren't shut down, but had big losses. Yeah. So if they weren't shut down, but had big losses. Yeah. Yeah. So if they weren't shut down, they were like basically never going to raise another, you know, good amount of financing. We've seen that time and time again. And then bulls have to face getting waxed constantly in these huge drawdowns.

And their conviction tested in what feels like quarterly at the minimum. So that's why they're difficult. They're difficult ones to own. And that's why they're traded so much. Because they're difficult to own and they're difficult to be short. And there's extreme pessimism and extreme optimism on both sides. And maybe the truth's somewhere in the middle, but they're difficult to own for that reason. And I just try to stay away from them. And they're usually culty and very popular. And a lot of them usually end up on that TD list

that you just showed. They're great for trading. So if people are traders, I mean, they tend to be very liquid. Very liquid and have a ton of volatility. Yeah, exactly. So that's a trader's dream right there but yeah i mean for tesla specifically i mean there were so many things that could have happened

that would probably have put the money the money the company in bankruptcy like who could have thought that elon would have like worked himself over there slept on the floor for a few hours kept working like who does that like literally aside from elon like who would be that dedicated i mean they had debt that needed to be refinanced and they were on the verge like so many times and they elon managed to find a way and my conclusion from all that is you just don't bet against elon like i just yeah whatever you think about him and i have mixed feelings about him and sometimes i agree with him sometimes not so much i just would not bet against a guy and i came from in kind of i did i did three or four internships with magnet International, the car company. I was involved in being on the corporate side, doing plant inspections all over Canada or all over Ontario.

And then also I did eight months in the manufacturing plant on the engineering side during my undergrad. And I saw firsthand how complex that business is, both from the OEM side, but also on the supplier side and how difficult it is to get right and how not only the CapEx, but also operationally to get to, I'll use the software word, like feature parity for these cars is very, very hard.

Like I was so bearish on the execution and I gotta give it to them like they did well even Elon has said this exact same thing he was I was listening to him a few months back on Joe Rogan and he said the exact same thing talking about the cyber truck he's like designing the truck and getting a prototype is not the hard part the hard part is getting it into production that's the hard part and I mean that is getting it into production. That's the hard part. And I mean, that's what you're saying. And that's, Elon said the exact same thing.

Sourcing all the parts with tier one, tier two, tier three, how it all flows together. I would be just amazed at how some of it was all pulled together. And I'm just like a know a 20 year old eager ambitious engineering student like just amazed at how this is all happening and like the plant floors like all robots these robots are painting the cars with they have like all these axes of rotation and i'm just like yeah i don't think tisdall is gonna be able to pull this off like

they got they're too far behind. Right. And so that was, that was where I came from it. Right. And so I guess where this comes from is you had a lot of people who are like very, very bullish on the name and had all these kinds of aspirations about what the business could become in the future. And some of them are right.

Some of them were wrong, depending on when they stated that claim. But at the end of the day, it's just not a type of equity I particularly like to hang out in because of all those things. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that was a good segment and I mean, for the most part,

I agree with you. It's just, yeah, they're battleground stocks for a reason and very difficult oftentimes to hold and value and try to establish where it will go in the future. Let's go to Intuitive Surgical here from this listener question. I'll read the question, then you can take it over. Sure.

I have been a shareholder. Are you a shareholder of Intuitive Surgical? No, I'm not. So I'm hoping you'll chime in a little bit. I just kind of answered more of the question on a high level basis. Listening to the latest episode, and since you brought the subject of high multiples, when do you consider trimming a core position due to valuation? I'm looking at intuitive surgical trade at 250 times free cash.

How do you weigh decades of 10% to 15% growth runway versus 250X free cash flow multiple? Yeah. So obviously the stock definitely looks expensive when looking at it on a trailing basis. Because when I was looking at the 250 times multiple that JF sent us the question referencing it, it's definitely on a trailing basis, not forwards. On a forward looking basis, it's more reasonable in air quote, I would say at around 71, but it's still not cheap. And that's obviously based on analyst forecast. So you always have to take those with a grain of salt. There's nothing wrong in my opinion to looking at trailing metrics. You just have to understand that you're looking backwards. And just to factor that

in, I actually personally like oftentimes just to look at both and just get a sense of it. I know some people just look at the forward ones. The problem is, you know, analysts are known to be wrong. So I think you have to, you know, do your due diligence as well. Free cash flow has been steadily declining since 2021, which is clearly putting pressure on the price of free cash flow along with the stock price going up. So it's kind of a combination of both here. So of course, you know, when looking backwards, it can look a bit crazy, but I'm not sounding the alarm or anything, but I would want to understand why that's the case. And maybe Brayden, you know you know but free cash was definitely been trending down for intuitive surgical it pretty

right like since i have it here since uh essentially 2021 yeah i'm gonna look this up while you speak keep going i'm gonna i'm gonna have a look at the caEx. Okay. So, yeah. And look, on a going forward basis, the valuation doesn't look – it's not cheap, obviously, but it's not out of whack. If you're comparing it with what has happened over the last five years for Intuitive Surgical, for our Joint TCI listeners, you'll be able to see it. Like, it's not – you know, it's definitely at the higher end for Intuitive Surgical, but it's not crazy. So I definitely would want, you know, you'll have to figure out where the growth is going forward. I know the company a little bit. I don't own it. I know Brayden knows it a lot better than I do. But that is something you'll want to be aware of. Where is it going forward? Because it's going to impact the prospects and if it's trading at a high multiple but it has a lot of growth going forward it's one thing if it's trading at high multiples but doesn't have a lot of growth then it's another and one other thing I

notice is the price the free cash flow per share is another thing that has been trending down. So pretty much in line with the free cash flow, it kind of peaked in 2021 and then at $4.80 per share, and then has been trending down most recently in the last 12 months to $1.07 per share. So these are all things I would definitely want to get some context on before I would make the decision to trim or not. I just graphed this out. So I graphed out R&D expenses that's been steadily rising to almost 300 million a quarter. And in those recent quarters with free cash flows down, CapEx was up significantly in the previous three quarters compared to previous before. And so this is a business in growth mode, looking to continue to horizontally expand their offering of robotic surgeries.

And so to me, it's a land and expand model. The KPI that matters the most for me is the number of installed systems in hospitals. And so that number continues to climb up and a little bit at an accelerated pace too. So we're up to nearly 9,000 installed systems in hospitals. And once those are installed, they're very sticky. All the surgeons love it. They don't want to switch. They don't go back to the traditional scalpel surgery once they're on this. And it has, I think, like 30,000 peer-reviewed articles from surgeons talking about how to use it, why they love it, et cetera. And so when you're talking about this company in terms of valuation, it's expensive, but it's always been expensive.

And I have not realized that I've owned the stock for quite some time now. I did not realize the stock's now 158 billion in market cap. The balance sheet is wonderful. Net cash position. The growth is fantastic. net cash position. The growth is fantastic. They're in a truly market leading position for a sector and industry that the market and the world is very excited about. That's basically all you need to know why it trades so high. You have this growth name. No, does it grow 80% a quarter? No. Does it grow at NVIDIA levels? No. But you have really, really steady

growth over time with a really, really long runway because 9,000 installed DaVinci base might turn into 30,000 in the next decade. And then you're churning out tons of recurring high margin revenue off of all the services and software that you need to run it over time. So it's a true razor and blades model. So if I'm a shareholder, I'm not looking for them to spit out free cash. So that leads me to the question around valuation. Is that the metric that makes sense to use for this business?

Probably not. that makes sense to use for this business? Probably not. I'd be looking at valuing it over EBITDA or operating income, sales, or enterprise value to gross profit. Any way you slice it, you can't find this thing cheaply. Doesn't matter how you slice it.

It's an expensive stock. Yeah, exactly. And I think you have to keep in mind that whenever a stock is expensive, and I think Braden explained why, you know, the future likely looks very bright for a company like Intuitive Surgical. I mean, you always have to keep in mind that there's nothing without risk, right? So you have to, when you have a high valuation and Intuitive Surgical, whichever way you look at it, it's not cheap. You know, if something goes wrong, there is more risk affected with that because the valuation is so high.

Even though the risk of something going wrong might be quite low. I mean, if something does go wrong or maybe they just, their earnings are a bit below expectations. You could see some big movements in the stock price if they don't kind of at least meet, if not beat guidance. So that's always something to keep in mind in terms of, you know, whether, you know, how do you decide to trim or not? I mean, at the end of the day, this is something that's a bit more personal. If you still believe in the prospect of the business, like Braden explained, I mean, you have to look at how large that position is as a percentage of your portfolio, because, you know, a core position for you, I don't know, it may be 5, 10, 15 percent.

I have no idea. Right. So what are you comfortable with? Is is it preventing you from sleeping at night? Are you stressed out that I could lose, you know, a significant chunk of its value and affect your portfolio in a big way, you know, if a stock has a big drawdown, say 50%, which is not impossible, right? If markets, there is a big correction in, you know, let's say NVIDIA drops by 50% for whatever reason. I have a feeling that overall, the markets will probably have a pretty, pretty bad time at the same time. I'm not saying it's necessarily what's going to happen, but just be cognizant of that, that there could be things that happen that have nothing to do with intuitive surgical that can create some big price

swings in the actual price. So are you able to deal with that is probably my question for you. And if you trim, do you have a plan to what to do with that money? Are you going to use that money to buy another company? Are you going to use it to buy an index fund? Are you going to put it in cash that's going to give you 5% until you find something? So having a plan, I think is a good thing. And the last thing I would say is for some people having rules really helps them kind of, you know, I've heard, I know a lot of investors that have strict rules. So let's say a core position for them is let's say you're, they're fine up to 10%. So that their rule is 10%. Once it gets 11% or more, they just trim it back to 10%. Some people, it works best for them because they have a rule.

They don't have to overthink it. It reaches that threshold. They trim it back. They take some profits off the table. And that's how they do it. They've had great success doing that. So maybe that's an option that works well for you. Brayden and I don't do that.

But I know some investors do that and it works very well for them. And that's something else you could consider. I think this is, yeah, this is a question around investing style. I tend to really, really fight at all costs, avoid selling winners. Especially, yeah, as you mentioned around like how big is that position? Intuitive Stelziger is still a small position for me, even though it's done well.

Yeah, it's a baby position. I looked, I knew you owned it. How big is it? I think it's like 1% at last I checked. It's been one of those workbench positions where I added to it and I liked the valuation and it's gone up significantly. And it's really hard to keep it.

It's the Chuck Ackery workbench position where it's like, significantly. And it's really hard to keep it. It's the Chuck Ackery workbench position where it's like, we love the company, but we haven't continued to acquire more shares because it's really hard to underwrite them at that valuation. But that doesn't mean I'm a seller. No, no, exactly. And you can argue, you can debate the point around every decision to not buy is a decision to sell.

I don't buy that. I've never really liked that way of thinking. I found that when I think like that, I end up over trading. I end up doing things that are silly when I should have just let this thing ride. And that's exactly what I've done. And that's been probably the right move. Yeah. Risk adjusted. Yeah. But at the end of the day, it really depends on your, like you said, an investor style,

right? Because some people, it really helps them having hard rules because that's the way that works best for them. It reduces stress. They know they can rely on the rules. They follow them. And Brayden and i will tend to let our runners run and we're comfortable with that but there is risk to that as well right you could do a round trip which is never fun so um keep that keep that in mind too it's just some of the question asking like we can't answer that for you but you have to think these are all things that you should be considering when assessing whether you should trim or not that position. As do-it-yourself investors, we want to keep our fees low. That's why Simone and I have been using Questrade as our online broker

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Bestrade.com. Here on the show, we talk about companies with strong two-sided networks make for the best products. I'm going to spend this coming February and March in an Airbnb in South Florida for a combination of work and vacation and realized, hey, my place could be a great Airbnb while I'm away. Since it's just going to be sitting empty, it could make some extra income. But there are still so many people who don't even think about hosting on Airbnb or think it's a lot of work to get started. But now it is easier than ever with Airbnb's new co-host network. You can hire a local quality co-host to take care of your home and guests. It's a win-win since you make some extra money hosting on Airbnb, but can still focus on enjoying your time away. Find a co-host at airbnb.ca forward slash host. That is Airbnb.ca forward slash host. So not so long ago, self-directed investors caught wind of the power of low cost index investing. Once just a secret

for the personal finance gurus is now common knowledge for Canadians and we are better for it. When BMO ETFs reached out to work with the podcast, I honestly was not prepared for what I was about to see because the lineup of ETFs has everything I was looking for. Low fees, an incredibly robust suite, and truly something for every investor. And here we are with this iconic Canadian brand in the asset management world. Well, folks online are regularly discussing and buying ETF tickers from asset managers in the US. Let's just look at ZEQT, for example, the BMO All Equity ETF. One single ETF, you get globally diversified equities. So easy way for Canadians to get global stock exposure with one ticker. Keeps it simple, yet incredibly low cost and effective. Very impressed with what BMO has built in their ETF

business. And if you are an index investor and haven't checked out their listings, I highly recommend it. I bet you'll be as pleasantly surprised as I was that BMO, the Canadian bank, is delivering these amazing ETF products. Please check out the link in the description of today's episode for full disclaimers and more information. When do you have to go? Do we have time for one more segment? We can do it in 10 minutes. Yeah. 10 minutes. All right. Let's do it. The countdown is on.

10 minutes. All right, let's do it. The countdown is on. TikTok on the clock here. I did a poll to my Twitter audience and I just basically said, what's the best personal finance hack that follows the Pareto principle? Basically, what's the 80-20 of your personal finance hacks? What's the super low effort but big result thing you can do? I got some seriously helpful ones. I got some ones that are really not easy to do. And I got some funny ones. So I'm going to go through a couple that got the most likes in order. So I don't think that this is particularly low effort, but it was the most liked response from Arena Man Capital. Marry someone who shares your financial goals. This resonated the audience

the most, it appears. And just on that same note, the Twitter algo had me from Doug Pohnparth tweeted, it's okay if one spouse handles the family finances, but it's unacceptable if the other spouse has no idea what's going on. That's a recipe for disaster. Both are responsible for understanding where they stand financially, even if someone's handling the day-to-day. Pretty good advice. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. That's what I do with my wife. I mean, I manage most of it. I try my best to keep her up to date because she doesn't have... She just trusts me, but I still want... Every so often, I kind of show her where everything is at our budget, you know, the investments we have. Basically, I don't force

her, but I strongly encourage her to look at it, especially when you have a daughter like I do. And, you know, if anything were to happen to me, I want her to at least have a decent understanding. She doesn't need to be an expert, but at least know where everything is. Yeah, good call. I put this one second because this is the far most inputted one. It's probably the most popular if I include the like 30 people that all said

something along the lines of direct automatic contributions to your investment account. For me, that's in the form of automatic bill payments to my account. I'm 20th a month and I invest on the last Tuesday of the month when I do my brokerage again activity. But the point here is forced savings and forced dollar cost averaging into your investments. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing to add there. Just pay yourself first. So many of my European friends wrote,

you don't need a car. It saves so much. And it's like, my buddy from London said that. My other buddy from Europe said that. He lives in a major city. It's like, that does not compute with the American brain, but it doesn't compute with the Canadian brain as well if you're not in a metropolitan city.

So, you know, where I live, you don't need one. I typically just only drive my car in the summer. Like I drive my car like three times a week in the summer and like once a month in the winter because I drive it to go up north to my cottage and play golf. Like that's pretty much it. Yeah. And so, sure, maybe that's a good recommendation. But for so so sure, maybe that's a good recommendation, but for so many folks listening, that's like, okay, thanks. That's not realistic.

I'd say along that same line is drive used reliable cars, nothing flashy and you don't need to finance a fancy brand new Mercedes. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, if i could i would we would only have one car but again with a young child where you have to drive her to places and logistics logistics it's not always easy but i totally agree i mean if you live in a major city oftentimes you can just deal with uh public transit and uber and then that'll be still but

that second car because you guys had one car for a while you bought a second car and you bought like a used very modest oh yeah yeah like i forget what you bought but like it was like a jetta yes huge jetta yeah like people i'm not trying to like you know pump your tires here but many people in your financial position would be buying, the average person in your financial position, which is quite good, would be buying something fancy and nice. And you're just like, nah, use Jetta, A to B, let's go. Yeah. My way was like the ideal price point where I pay the cheapest, yeah, still get reliability. That was like the intersection of the two. And I have a great Volkswagen mechanic.

So that's why we stayed in Volkswagen. So that was the second reason. One thing that I really liked was always wait a day or two before checking out when online shopping. I do this just with stuff that I'm like, do I really need this? Another person wrote, if you don't check out on the shopping cart and they have your email, most e-commerce sites will email you a promo code to complete your checkout after like 12 hours. Oh, really? Okay. That's kind of funny too. Yeah. I mean, you can do all that stuff with email automations now at this time. Some talk about credit card points

and the old classic make coffee at home, you know, the usuals. Yeah, the next one is my favorite. But this one took the crown. Mitchell C. No pun intended. Writes, balding. You don't have to do anything

and you cut out your monthly haircut expense just go bald yeah hey i can vouch for that yeah it's too bad you're losing hair but again i same for me like i just shave my head like with the raised electric razor the shortest i can i do it myself and saving like probably like 50 to 70 bucks on average a month because oftentimes I would go every three, four weeks. So yeah. Yep. I, um, I'm spending that, but you know what? I used to get, uh, I had a, I had a while there. My girlfriend was cutting my hair. She did a pretty good job, but, uh, yeah, it's one of those things where it's like, it's good to, it's good to look good, feel good type of thing with the haircuts.

But it's just outrageous, like the prices around, especially in like these major metro cities. I got a haircut in San Diego. Maybe I don't know how long ago that was now. It's a blend of all my these work trips. But I got a haircut there and I think it was 70 US. I hope it was the best haircut you ever had. Did you get like a shampoo and all that, like a scalp massage? He did give, I guess, on paper, one of the better haircuts that I've ever gotten.

He really took his time. But I was almost there for too long. haircuts that i've ever gotten he really took his time but i was i was almost there for too long you know it's like i don't want you to rush it but like why am i still here it's been a long it's been a while i guess they just want they charge that much like this you got to be in the chair for a while yeah i know at least women for the most part i know my wife and i've talked to other girls about that like they tend especially if you have longer hair, they'll go like every three, four months or so.

So yes, it's more expensive one shot, but at least they don't have to go as often as a guy. Like for us, if you have shorter hair, I mean, if you're not going for more than three, four weeks,

like, you know, it starts like curling up near your hair, your ear and stuff like that. So it really shows pretty quickly. We'll round out today's show by letting you know here on the podcast, you know, that I just got another cold email from Constellation Software to buy Finjet. Perfect.

An operating group hits us up every month. It's breaking my heart. Yeah. Okay. Okay. They're just so on it. They have like, they have quite the sales machine in terms of like making acquisitions. It. Okay. They're just so on it. They have quite the sales machine in terms of making acquisitions. It's amazing. It's so impressive. I just see these, I just laugh. I go, thanks,

but no thanks. But I'm a shareholder. Keep it up. Keep blasting those emails out. Keep blasting those emails out. I'm not your right target, but keep blasting those emails out. Thank you for listening to the podcast, folks. We really appreciate you tuning in here. We are Mondays and Thursdays on the show. The show goes on. And if you haven't gave the show five stars or followed it on your podcast player, it's the lowest, it's the Pareto principle. It's the

growth hack of our podcast, the Pareto principle. It takes you very low effort, but it makes a huge impact for us. So that's probably the easiest way to support the show is, you know, five star on your podcast player and then leaving a little written review and boosting our dopamine levels. Thanks for listening. We diligence or consult with a financial professional before making any financial or investment decisions.