The Canadian Investor - Two Surprising Canadian Stocks and What Canada’s New Fund Could Buy

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

In this episode, Simon and Dan answer listener questions covering Canada’s new sovereign wealth fund, speculative space ETFs, real economy stocks, and how younger investors can get started. They start by discussing where the new Canada Strong Fund could potentially invest, including critical minerals, uranium, energy infrastructure, pipelines, and companies tied to national sovereignty. They also look at why a West-to-East pipeline could become a much bigger political and economic issue as Canada thinks more seriously about energy security. The conversation then shifts to the new Canadian-listed space ETF, the risks of niche thematic funds, and why space investing remains a high-risk, high-reward area. Simon and Dan also compare the recent strength in technology and semiconductor stocks with more traditional “real economy” companies like railways, waste collection, infrastructure, and industrial businesses. They wrap up by discussing some of the most surprising Canadian stock performers of 2026, including Aritzia and Bombardier, before answering a listener question on how young Canadians can start investing using accounts like the FHSA and TFSA, as well as broad-based ETF options. Tickers of stocks discussed: CCO, NMG, TECK, MDA, SOBO, ENB, TRP, ORBX, RKLB, PL, ASTS, TOY, CLS, CP, WCN, QQQ, SPY, DIA, RSP, L, BDGI, BRK.B, ATZ, LULU, NKE, BBD.B, ZEQT, XEQT, VEQT, FGRO, FEQT, XIU 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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Welcome back to the Canadian Investor Podcast. Today's episode will be centered around listener questions where you receive from, from a bunch of you. And we have a good mix. We have ETFs, the new Canadian sovereign funds, space stocks, real economy companies, and how younger investors can get started with investing. So we have a lot of fun questions here. Dan, you want to do the first one and get started here? Yeah, and I apologize for the people who asked these. I didn't actually note any names, but we grabbed them from a wide variety of places. But this was actually, I found this to be one of the more interesting questions.

And it revolves around the new Canada sovereign wealth fund. And it is because we know that they are, I guess they didn't say they're guaranteed to be buying public companies, but they said that they do have the, you know, kind of angle to buy public companies. And they were asking, what company do you expect would be the first one that the government invests in with this fund? And the, you know, the original tickers that they had mentioned were companies like actually WSP or Terevest. I'm not really sure this is the angle the government is going to take. I mean, WSP does have a lot of exposure in Canada, but it's also a global company. And I think the government is probably going to take the approach of kind of protecting and investing in their best interest here.

And I don't think an engineering firm would really be the angle. that they're going to take. And you'll touch more on this a bit more in depth, but I think what they'll probably do, like what I could see them doing. And obviously, this is just pure speculation here, but critical minerals and potentially the energy route is, you know, where I think they will go. The country is looking to go the green energy route. So I think a logical company here would be a chemico. They have some of the highest grade uranium mines on the planet. And most of them are in northern Saskatchewan. So I don't know a ton about this space, but I know that their partnership with Brookfield, I believe they went 50-50 on Westinghouse is kind of a big deal for SMRs, which are

small modular reactors. So I could see them being a bit of a mainstay in power generation over the while. Apparently they take up a lot less space. They're a lot safer from a nuclear standpoint. And, you know, I could definitely see the government maybe investing in them. But yeah, I don't know your take on this. I just don't see them like critical minerals and energy, something, you know, like to protect the interests of the country seems like more of the angle they'll take rather than, you know, obviously WSP, you know, if they invested in that, like the infrastructure projects, the engineering, it would, would help, you know, they, if Canada grows, WSP grows, but I just don't really see them taking that angle. Yeah, my, look, we don't know exactly what they'll be investing in,

of course. So these are just the big lines that were announced with the spring update. I don't think there's been anything else that's been really announced since, which is fine. It's only been a couple weeks. But for me, I'm definitely thinking about more of the critical minerals area. And there is something pretty interesting that does provide some insights as to what the government may look to do. And that's the critical mineral research development and demonstration program. It looks like it was instituted in 2021, so that would have been under the Trudeau government.

And essentially, it's looking at, it was funding projects that met certain critical minerals that are important for the Canadian economy. I'm trying to find here some, just on the website here. So they do name a few of these minerals. So they name lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, and rare elements. So nothing extremely surprising. But it probably gives us a little bit of an idea of what the government may be thinking in terms of supporting some projects here. So that's the lands I use. So some names that could potentially be looked at by the federal government or the Canada Strong Fund.

Nouveau-Mone graphite could be an interesting place. So just thinking about the graphite portion. so the critical mineral around that, my understanding it is used in lithium ion batteries. It's not the lithium, of course, but it is used as part of those batteries. Tech Resources is another one, although this one would be definitely more

from a copper exposure perspective, but if they're thinking about building the grid, and I know some of the announcement in the budget, but also the Canada Strong Fund, was looking at some projects that would be focused, for example, in the Western, Canadian BC North and higher up north where there's not necessarily the infrastructure to support some project in place. So you have to build out that infrastructure to be able to make those

projects viable. So that could be a play here. And MDA space could be another target. So whether the government is looking at space robotics, satellites, communication, surveillance, or defense agent agenticent capabilities. That's all fit that natural sovereignty angle. When I'm tired and I'm trying to pronounce some words, I'm not as used to saying in English. Adjacent. There you go. Yes. So yeah. So those are all potential I think angles that the government could play here. And again, I think the strategy, and we were just speculating a little bit here, but clearly they're trying to build wealth for Canada, but I think there is also a strategic perspective to that fund as well.

So just trying to think about that in kind of big picture and the type of companies in terms that they could support, whether through loans, whether through equity interests. I think for the most part, it sounds like it's more they want to stake in these projects. So I think that's probably the angle they'd be taking. Yeah. If you go to, if you Google major projects office, you'll get a government website where you can see like critical projects for kind of national importance. And if you go to this list, the one thing you will notice is the vast majority of them are either critical minerals or

energy. Like you have a nickel mine in Ontario. You have a nuclear project in Ontario as well. You have hydro projects. LNG phase two in Kittamat would be another big one. So I guess, yeah, To answer it, I don't really think they're going to go the angle of a publicly traded company that doesn't really have the, you know, that energy interest, critical mineral interest. Like, I don't really see them buying into a telecom company or a bank or anything like that. It's going to have to have something revolving around like what we've discussed now. Obviously, pure speculation. They might not even end up buying public companies.

Like, it's only an option for them. It's not a necessity. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, there is also the infrastructure place, but those, there's not that many Canadian company, especially if you're thinking like a high speed rail in the east right from the Quebec to Toronto corridor, I think Windsor corridor that they're talking about there. So I don't know exactly. Maybe they would take the financing angle a bit more. The one that does come to mind is that I think is becoming more or more possibility just because of the current state of geopolitics and what we've seen. the U.S., how they've been acting under Donald Trump. But honestly, I think if the federal government ever pushes for an energy E-style pipeline from Alberta to eastern Canada, that would be a massive project. It would require large investment.

And realistically, any company willing to take that on would probably need some form of government support, whether it's regulatory certainty, loan guarantees, project equity, whatever it is, just to show that the government won't back out or they'll be. It won't pour in a lot of billions of dollars just to essentially not see the project complete. I think a lot of these companies have been snake bitten with the past 10, 15 years, and they are probably seeing that this government is more open to this. But if you think about just geopolitically what we're seeing in the Middle East and like I said to US, I think it's becoming more and more important to have energy security for Canada. and a lot of people might think, oh, well, you know, we're fine in Canada, we're net exporters, and that's all fine and dandy.

But the reality, Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic provinces are not supplied most, are not purely supplied by Western Canadian oil. A lot of, we're actually importing quite a bit of oil in Eastern Canada because we just don't have the infrastructure to send oil from the west to east. Of course, you can use rail, but rail has its own issue. You can't scale it as quickly. You also have some, it's less reliable. It's also, we've seen some disasters in the past with Lackmigatsik in Quebec, that massive

explosion that happened, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago. I don't remember exactly when. So there could be some reluctance regarding that. So I think for me, honestly, I think there's going to be more and more political will to see that kind of pipeline happen in Canada. and some of the names that could be considered for that, a long way to say that some of the names could be Southbow and Bridge, TC, Energy, or even like a consortium involving some large players,

including the producers, obviously including some indigenous partners in there and potentially some government equity or government back financing. But I think if that pipeline is ever going to happen, now is probably the time. I think so, yeah. I mean, and I don't think these pipelines, pipelines are going to take it on themselves.

I mean, look at how badly TC energy was burnt on. Yeah. What is that? Keystone. The keystone that Biden shut down in 2021. Yeah, they just, they're not going to go into it without some sort of assurance that it's not going to end up as ugly as that did. So, yeah, I could, I get the pipeline angle seems like the most obvious one, to be honest. And again, that falls down to energy.

Critical minerals, energy, any sort of, you know, you. know, something to kind of improve Canada in terms of reliance on, on other countries. But yeah, just I think that's all I think that's the big theme, right? And we're seeing it with the U.S. Like Canada, I think is realizing it has to become more self-reliant for not only critical minerals, but energy as well. And I think the conflict in the Middle East, the geopolitical situation we're seeing around the world, some country is actually starting to ration gas because they're so dependent on oil imports. I think that's a wake-up call.

And even though I understand the environmental concerns that come up with a pipeline, I think a lot of people are realizing that those are important and you have to keep those in mind for sure. But the price of not doing anything and the potential consequences are much greater from an economic standpoint. And it's easy to say when you're not seeing any economic disturbance. But if you start seeing massive disruption or you're dependent on imports in the east to the U.S. or elsewhere in the world, I could become a big problem. But enough about that. Anything else you want to add before we go to the next one here?

No, let's sit. That's it. Sorry. 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, you don't have to wait until you have thousands of dollars saved up to make a move.

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Go to Shopify.ca. That's Shopify.ca. Cheching. Let's dive into the brand new Canadian ETF. This is a US ETF that they created a Canadian. wrapper for. So it's ORBX. I believe it trades on as ORBX on both the U.S. in Canada. And this is a space ETF. So they wanted to know our opinions on whether or not this is, you know, worthy of a buy or not. And I mean, in my opinion, high risk, high reward fund. I've watched

plenty of these like niche related funds over the years come and go. I even owned one of them. I used to have a very small speculative position in a psychedelic ETF. I believe a Global X had it. I might be wrong on that, but it was like the ticker was called psych. It pretty much absolutely cratered. They couldn't get any enough assets into the fund and they ended up shutting it down. Cannabis ETFs would be another one. Cannabis ETFs did not have any problems getting funds into them.

But what would it be HMMJ? Yeah, it was something like that. I was going to say HMJ or is it still even? I wonder if it's still trade. I imagine that one is still trading, but yeah, they come out generally as fund managers, they're kind of going to look to where the money is going and they're going to come out with these niche funds because they know there will be a lot of retail interest in them. Whether or not they last over the long term, like solely depends on whether or not the trend

continues. That said, I do think space is a bit of a different beast here. You know, there, these types of companies for a very long time were effectively government, you know, government funded science projects. But I think it's kind of turning into a massive commercial industry, like, period. For a lot of these companies, on the fund itself, it's high fee, but it's not really all that abnormal for a niche fund like this. It's around 50 basis points.

So it's not like, it's really not that bad for, for a fund like this. And by the, by the looks of it, and I'm just kind of saying this. because they kind of mentioned a Canadian ETF. This fund has very little Canadian exposure. MDA Space is the only company in this, I believe. And they would be, as you're showing here, around 4% of the portfolio. I don't know if they own like a tinier Canadian name. I believe MDA is the only one in there.

And it's heavily weighted towards Rocket Lab. So 22% Planet Labs and ATS Space Mobile. I think like these three make up 40% plus of the fund. And just to kind of give you an idea on valuations, Rocket Lab is trading at around 100x EV sales. So revenue is expected to explode. So on a trailing basis, that's not really the best number. I think the numbers get much better on a forward basis. I think we're talking like 30x, maybe a little bit less.

But expected is the word here. The fund is kind of stuff full of highly speculative in some cases, even pre-revenue companies. If I was going to buy this, I would be doing it with very, minimal amounts of my portfolio. Like I think when I bought Syke, it was like a quarter point, like 0.25% of my portfolio, a complete pure speculation play. And as I had mentioned, like this isn't anything unique to Canada. This is just kind of a Canadian rapper fund.

So you buy it and you buy it in Canadian dollars and it just owns the US dollar version from what I read. Yeah, I mean, I don't have too much to add to that. Definitely just on the speculative side, I would say anyone interested in this. make sure you size it accordingly. You said 25 basis point. That's very small. But someone wants to take a bit more of a swing at it, maybe one to two percent.

But again, I think it really dependent on your risk tolerance. And any time that I look at very speculative names or ETFs like this, for me, I always approach it. Okay, what's the weighting of my portfolio that I'm comfortable that will go to zero if I invest in it? So if you're fine with one to two percent going to zero, complete right off, that's fine. Maybe it's higher for you, maybe it's lower. I can't speak for that. I can't speak for your risk tolerance,

but that's how I approach speculative investments. And it kind of reminds me a little bit too of like the ARG, the Kathy Wood funds, where it's just a lot of speculation in new type of technologies that will revolutionize the world. I mean, those companies are oftentimes very high hype, very little to no profits,

losing money. So just just be aware what you're getting into. So not much more to add to that one. Yeah, I would say SpaceX is almost a guarantee to go in this when they go public. Like I would imagine they would add that in. The one thing I will say about this is if you're going into this segment of the market, because there's so many of these pre-revenue, you know, high valuation companies, I do think an ETF is the better route instead of like kind of seeking out a lot of these

companies on an individual basis. I mean, just so you don't pick the wrong horse in the race, per se. So I do think an ETF is probably better for a lot of people than individual equities, because I mean, this space is probably very, there's probably not a lot of understanding as to what is going on in this space. So it's not a bad ETF. I don't think if you want exposure to the space for the vast majority of people, it's going to be easier to keep track of than individual space stocks, period. Okay. So, it's. Let's move on to the next question here. Money has flowed out of real economy stocks and into technology and semiconductors.

Does this provide opportunity in these stocks at discounted prices or is tech the play here? So these stocks, I'm assuming the real economy stocks at discounted prices versus tech technology or semi-plays. So I think this is a pretty good question as well. I mean, we have tech companies soaring to new highs, AI exposure. And that exposure is starting to show up in earnings, at least in the case of something like Alphabet, there's still a lot of companies who are rolling out a ton of spend that haven't really realized the benefits yet. But I think the market is kind of looking towards Alphabet who's starting to see this. And then we have real economy stocks by real economy, you know, kind of the things that just make the world go round. Like railways, you know, waste collection.

Think about the kind of companies that Buffett would buy. There you go. Exactly. Yeah. That's it. Absolutely. And I believe that this is the largest amount of stocks on the S&P 500. I read that this was about a month ago that I read this, but it was the largest amount of stocks on the S&P 500 that are in correction territory while the index sits at all time highs in history.

So there's never been as many beat up stocks. I guess you could say in the S&P 500 when the S&P 500 is at all time highs. other than right now. Maybe not right now, but a month ago, this was the situation. I remember reading that around six of the 11 sectors of the market were in correction territory. So I think one of the more interesting strategies here is kind of finding where the two intersect in terms of real economy versus tech plays. And what I mean by this is you cannot have AI without the power, the infrastructure, the heavy equipment, etc. We've seen that in an earning segment.

We went over last week with Toramon. They made this small acquisition a year ago that was effectively a rounding error for the company, earned them nothing. They even said they expect it to earn nothing moving forward, like very small. And the company made steel housings for switchgear and generators. And now you see that company growing at a 500% year over your pace. It's like 480%. And they actually made up around 17% of Toramont's earnings. So the craziest thing about this AI,

expansion is that like some of the most boring and average businesses in the world have seen some absurd growth from this. I think that the poster child for this would be Celestica. It was, I mean, it was an awful company pre-AI, very low margin, boring business, pretty much flat returns for a decade. They didn't really grow all that much. And it just kind of, you know, AI kind of fell on their lap. They make like steel racks that'll hold GPUs, things like that. A lot of other stuff, but just, you know, that's one of the things they make. So that said, I do think a lot of real economy stocks are sitting at very attractive valuations right now. And there is a, there is a larger margin of safety, in my opinion, there than there is in tech. And I'm not trying

to say that these companies will outperform tech. I'm just saying you're paying a pretty penny for a lot of the growth in tech right now. Well, a lot of these real economy stocks, like let's just say CPKC, like CPRail, waste connections are kind of in the gutter. if tech executes moving forward, there's probably very little question it will outperform these types of, you know, real economy compounders over the year. But they just like the real economy just does not have the tailwinds right now. But in an event, we see some, you know, cracks in the foundation there in regards to AI. I think the drawdown on tech would be absolutely ugly.

And that's kind of what I say. That's kind of why I say the margin and margin of safety is probably with these types of companies. And one of the interesting questions, I guess you would ask people, if you had $100,000 to put in a company, let's just say waste connections or meta, but you had to buy it and not look at it and not look at it and not sell it for a decade, like which company would you choose? And I would imagine 95% of listeners would probably say meta, but if you truly think about it, which is the business that is all but guaranteed to be chugging along in a decade? a tech company that's spending, you know, 100 billion plus into a piece of tech with unknown monetization pass for the most part or a company that just picks up trash every week. It's, you know, it's, it's an interesting question. I would imagine a lot more lean to tech, but I would imagine a lot more leaning to tech just

because of the results over the last while. And I think we're getting some pretty good prices on those old school real economy stocks. I mean, they might not be the flashiest or have, you know, as big a growth stories moving forward, but these are still kind of the companies that move the world. Yeah, and I mean, I think what you were saying with meta and waste connection, probably the best way to think about it is,

are you looking for something with a high floor or high ceiling? Yeah. Right. And I don't want to, I guess I should clarify that. Meta will be around in 10 years. I'm just saying if you objectively. I don't know if it'll be around in 10 years.

No, honestly, like, I don't know. I don't know. You don't know. Yeah, for a company in tech. Like, it may well. I'll be, but I can give you some scenarios where it will not be around in 10 years. Like 10 year for a tech company is a lifetime. Like, it's like I'm being serious.

Like I'm certain that waste connection or not certain, but there's a high degree of certainty it will be around in 10 years. And it probably a different, maybe it'll be operated by robots more. I don't quite know, but meta I can see, you know, some scenarios where it completely blows up. I can definitely. Yeah. I can definitely see that. To me, it's more of a question. Do you want a high floor or high ceiling, but with a high ceiling, you can also have the opposite. A very low floor. Yeah. Exactly.

And just to add to that, I think just to get a perspective how things have been trending over the last year. So you have four ETFs that illustrate that. And they're all US listed because I wanted just to rule out the currency aspect of it. But if you're looking here at QQQQ, which is the NASDAQ 100, it's up 37% over the last a year. A lot of these returns are since March of this year. So within the last month and a half roughly, a lot of these returns have come from that. It's up 37%. You look at the SNP 500.

It's up 26%. And then you go down, you look at the Dow Jones Industrial, which is probably that more traditional economy that we're talking about here up 18%. And then you have the S&P 500 equal weighted. That's of 15%. So pretty much 10% difference between that and the market cap weighted just illustrates how much of discrepancy that you've had since then. And then if you're looking since March 30th, it's absolutely crazy.

So you have the equal weighted up 8%. The Dow Jones Industrial up 10%. And then the SNP 500 up 17%. And you have the NASDAQ up 27%. That's in a month and a half. So that is just, I don't know what else to say. This is just, it's pretty crazy. There is clearly a lot of hype around it.

A lot of the decline was due to the war in Iran, which still hasn't been resolved. And yet the markets are just completely disregarding that. And the potential impacts, of shortages, not only energy, but other critical resources that a lot of them come from the Middle East. But having said that, you can definitely understand why it's a good question and why, of course, like big tech and semiconductors are just leading the way, just by these ETFs and the difference, you know, that, you know, best performers are really tech and semiconductor heavy.

And White's connection, like you said, it's trading a lowest multiple in about five years on a Ford P and price to free cash flow basis. Even a company like Loblaws has come back down valuation-wise. Still not cheap, but getting more to a reasonable level. One company that I've had an eye on and I'm, I guess I missed it a little bit, is Badger Infrastructure, so BDGI was another one that had a really strong quarter in the stock as rebound. And I think it's up like 30% roughly since the quarter.

But that is one that could have been a really traditional, economy type of infrastructure play, and even something like Berkshire that has been going sideways for a while now, I think better part than a year while the SMP 500 has been soaring. It could be an interesting play, of course. Berkshire, it's a conglomerate. There's all different kind of businesses, but it's definitely heavy in those more real world economy type of businesses than an SMP 500 index would be. Yeah, and Badger is like a daylighting company, like a HydroVAC.

company. They do a lot more than that, but they're going to, they're definitely going to thrive in a high energy market because they do a lot of work in the, in the oil and gas sector, but I was reading a article. But even like municipal infrastructure work, I mean, I see there, the reason why I keep thinking about, I see their trucks everywhere in Ottawa doing, you know, into sewers and stuff. Yeah, and they, they're not cheap. HydroVax are not cheap. I was reading an article that had mentioned semiconductors. They were kind of comparing like the semiconductor index to their 200 day moving average. And they said this is the largest gap. So the large, they've accelerated so much so fast that I believe they're like 60% above their 200 day moving average, which is

the largest gap since the cycle peak in 2000. So that kind of shows you how much they've moved up. Over the last month or so, if you did not own semiconductors, I mean, they've done insanely well over the last while. I mean, whether or not they correct a bit is another story, but it's been a complete meltup over the last while. 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, you don't have to wait until you have thousands of dollars saved up to make a move.

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Go to shopify.ca. That's shopify.com. Cheching. But yeah, that's all I got on that one. Do you want to move on to the Canadian companies? Yeah, exactly. So which Canadian company's performance has surprised you the most in 2026? So you start off and I'll go with mine here. Yeah, so I would say Eritzia, almost zero question. I mean, anybody. Yeah, that's because no way. It's just because, you know, maybe I'm a bit biased, but probably a lot of listeners have known, like I own Eritzia. I'm fairly bullish on Eritzia. I actually named it when we did the 10 best stocks to own for the long time for the over the next 10 years. or whatever. I included this as my last one, kind of as a bit of a speculative play in that regard. But I've owned this company since 2018, kind of in and out of it from 2018 to 2023, but kind of

really aggressively added to my position on inventory fears in 2023. And it's, it's turning out to be one of the better gross stories in the country over the last while. I think probably from, I remember my first buy in 2018 was probably around 18 bucks to share. So it's got to be a approaching 10-bagger territory from 2018. I mean, it's got a bit to go, but at 2023 levels, I think it's up 500 some percent. And the reason why it's surprising is just, you know, the pressure on some huge U.S. retailers like Nike and Lulu Lemon. Like, they can barely post positive same store sales while Eritzia is growing at, you know, 27% comparable sales growth. And I don't really think you can't just say it's the company riding the, the coattails.

of a hot economy and people spending on higher price clothing because it's really not. I mean, the economy is is not like we're seeing that case shaped obviously. And yeah, you know, people with more money generally are not feeling it as much. So that kind of creates a tailwind for a Ritsia, but this is kind of a company that is defying every logic as to how it should be performing if you're looking at, you know, consumer spending and consumer confidence overall. And the more interesting part about it is the runway is still quite long. I mean, they have plenty of room for U.S. expansion.

They're paying off new store builds in 12 to 18 months after they open them. So, I mean, if that doesn't entice them to expand even more aggressively, they're debt free. They kind of fund all this new growth through free cash flow. And yeah, I mean, if you were to ask me when I bought it back in 2023, whether it'd be $150, you know, three years later, I definitely would have said no. It's just gone on a wild run. Yeah, I mean, over the last three years, it's up 300.

percent. Lululemon is down 68% if we round up and Nike is down 65%. So it's done, it's done well, better than the peers. I'll give you that. The Lululemon though is starting to look very cheap. Yes. Even if, even if like the growth is slowed and there's some serious questions about the product assortment, it's definitely starting to look. I mean, at some point I might just, yeah, Just buy a small position as a turnaround play. Just because, I mean, almost just on the cash degenerate, if you can just figure out if the company just keeps sales as is, they'll still be able to return a whole lot of money to shareholders. So something I'll keep an eye on. But for me, it was between Celestica and Bombatzi.

And since we've talked about Celestica quite a bit, I think, overall, this year because it has benefited from the AI boom, I'll choose Bombat Z. And believe it or not, Bonaparte is up a whopping 200% in the last year. It's crushed, Eritzia. Really? Eritzia, I think, is up 121% where Bon Bardsier is up, like, just short of 200. Yeah, I honestly, I never really looked at it in the past years because to me it was just like this constant company that was bailed out by the Quebec government over years and years, I think, probably got. got some federal funding too. But for those not familiar, especially a younger listener,

Bombardier was founded by Joseph Armand Bombardier. And he's widely credited with inventing the modern Snowbobil and later commercializing the Skidu. If you look and do some research, you'll see that the actual Snowbobil was invented, like I think in the late 1800 before him, but he's the one that really commercialized the modern one. It's a really impressive turnaround story.

I will not lie. The company decided around I think six, seven years ago to put its focus on the private jet side of the business. So it fully sold its C-Series commercial planes program to Airbus. That eventually became the Airbus A-220. From what I read, I'm not an aviation expert. It was a solid aircraft, but it was just not a money-making type of business for them. They also sold their rail business to Alstom a few years ago, and they were able to use the proceeds from the sale to shore up the balance sheet and focus on producing what has become

a very profitable business line for them. So the private jets, more specifically, the Challenger and Global Line. So if you go on the website, you'll see those two jets over there. So really think about, yeah, those kind of business or a high, wealthy individual, the type of private jets that they would buy. The company went from burning cash producing over $1.7 billion in free cash over the last 12 months. It's been generating free cashels since 2012. Sorry, since 2022. And it's a similar kind of story when you start looking at the net income as well. It's dead as gone from 10 billion in 2020 to 4.4 billion on their most recent earnings release. I'll be honest. Yeah, I'm impressed. Like, it's not easy to bet on turnaround plays and usually those will backfiring more often than not.

but man if you bought bon bouts yay i'm just trying to look here how long ago 900% five years ago it's wild yeah congratulations if you bought uh yeah yeah i mean i have it more i have it up 1100 in the last oh really i just looked on like i just googled and used the google charts or whatever that pops up first but yeah yeah five years and then total return I don't think it's really paid a dividend. So, but yeah, 11.59%. So if you bought it five years ago, congratulations. You've crushed it.

But no, I mean, that's probably one of the bigger surprises. I'm sure there's other ones, but that one stood out for me. So the last question here, so we have a question from Byron. He said he has three kids, 15, 20, 22. They're all interested in investing. They'd love to buy a house someday and also save for retirement. he's wondering if we can suggest stocks that they should invest in, ETFs, and maybe something that gives dividends.

He's not sure because he's not an expert. And obviously we cannot give financial advice here. But I'll provide some guidelines, some big lines, and feel free to chime in, Dan. So first, if your children want to buy a house one day, they should definitely consider maxing out the first home savings account. It's the best, I mean, it is the best investment vehicle in Canada. If you forget about the house buying part for a second, of course, it must be used to purchase a house.

If you contribute money to it but end up not buying a house within the time frame that's allocated to you, then you'll have to transfer it to an RSP. So it's not lost or anything. It's just then becomes an RSP. But you do get the tax credit up front and then you don't get tax on the proceeds if you use it towards a house. So it's an RSP and TFSA combined all in one. So you have the best of both worlds. Yeah, and I think, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but if you transfer to an RSP, it doesn't take up any of your existing RSP room. I might be wrong on that, though.

Yeah, I'm not sure about that. Yeah, I wouldn't. You could be right. I really don't know. I don't know. Yeah, double check that. Yeah. Double check that if you're listening.

But I'm pretty sure, like, if you have 20 grand in RSP room and you transfer the FHSA to a RSP, you don't buy a home, I don't think it takes up that 20K in room. But, yeah, double check that. And after, so it's definitely the best account for that. And after that, given their age, I'd be looking, like, this is general kind of, you know, accepted guidance, I would say. But for younger people in their early 20s, I'd be looking at maxing out their TFSC since they're likely not going to see any huge benefits, if any at all, from contributing to an RSP. since you're essentially deferring your taxes to retirement. That's a whole goal of an RSP. So you don't pay them now, but you pay them later.

Hopefully later you'll be taxed at a lower rate. But the problem is when you're young, you get that basic tax exemption. And oftentimes you're not making a huge salary either. So you end up not being tax a whole lot to begin with. So if you do have some remaining money, you'll typically want to contribute that to TFS. Of course, if you're crushing it and making half a million,

year and you're 20, then, you know, you may want to consider an RSP, but I think most younger kids are not in that situation. One caveat to that would be employer matching. Yeah, employer matching. But again, yeah. If you're younger, usually you don't necessarily have jobs that have a whole lot of benefits tied to them, including retirement benefits. So it's, I would say I agree with you, but, you know, generally. And again, this is more general speaking, but you're, you're completely right. And for the younger child, that's not 18. That's a bit trickier. It's not the essence of your question. So I won't go into a great detail. I'm not a tax expert there. But my understanding, there's a few options, including an interest account or simply investing the money in a taxable

account of your own. And then when your child is 18, sell those investments and give the proceeds minus the applicable taxes to the child. The interest account is a bit different. And we can always do a deeper dive in the future if people are interested in it. There are some different tax implications, though, for these type of accounts. So make sure you do your research if that's what you're looking for the younger child. But again, a lot of accounts essentially you just can't open until you're 18. So in terms of investment, which was the key portion of your question, you don't need to be an expert to invest. I think that's a good thing. The problem with owning individual stocks, and I know you had mentioned in the question low, all possibly Canadian banks, is that you don't need to be.

that you have to understand the business. And I know a lot of people own Canadian banks and don't really understand the business, but that's beside the point. Does anyone fully? Yeah, does anyone fully? Is really the real question. And especially when you hold individual stock, you still have to, you want to stay on top of the business. I'm not saying like going through every quarterly call, but you definitely want to check in on maybe once or twice a year, how the business is doing. And for a lot of investors, if not most, I'd say the best route year is the ATE. route. However, ETFs are a very wide category of investments and since your kids are all young, I think a very attractive option is an all in one equity ETF because they're a great option.

They provide instant diversification across equities, sectors, geography in terms of diversification, and they require very little maintenance. Essentially, you can almost kind of set them and forget them. And of course, for someone who's younger that have years, if not decades, Cades to invest. It's fine to be 100% equity as long as you have a long-term horizon and you don't panic when there's some fluctuation here and some ideas to consider and make sure, of course, you do your own research here. It's not financial advice. ZETEQT from BMO, our great sponsor is a good option. XEQT as well, VEQT. These are equities only. Fidelity also has FGRO that has some Bitcoin exposure, but it also has close to 15% of fixed income, which the other three options don't. And it does have higher fees than the other three option. I think the Fidelity one is around 0.4, 0.42%. Not huge, but much higher, almost double.

I think what you'll see with ZET, XEQT, or VQT. So keep that in mind. It is still not cheap. But I figured I mentioned that because Fidelity is a bit unique in the fact that they have products all in one that includes some Bitcoin exposure. But like I said, buying stock, individual stocks is fine, but I feel like a lot of people get into buying individual stocks and they're just not willing to put the work. And oftentimes, they would have way better results if they just took the, the Kiss approach, keep it simple,

stupid approach and just the all in one equity ZTF offer that kind of one stop shop. Of course, there's all in one ETF that do offer some fixed income. Right. And, exposure as well. I just mentioned those because when you're younger, oftentimes you want to be heavily more heavily weighted into equities. But if you want a bit more fixed income, there are some options as well. And it's just you can really, yeah, you can dollar cost average. It's easy. You have this one name. You put some money every single pay. And yeah, it just grows over time. So I've recommended to friends and family just for people understand. So they know I do the podcast. will come to me and they're like, oh, I want to invest or I'm with the banks and I'm paying like

high percent mutual fees. I want to get rid of them. So I'll show them how to open a brokerage account. Then they're like, oh, what stocks, what funds and blah, blah, blah. And usually I'll just go to one, like I'll just kind of show them like maybe six, seven all in one ETS. And I'll be like, okay, like just kind of give you, give them a few questions as to what like their risk tolerance is and so on. And then I'll suggest one of them. And I just say, yeah, just dollar cost average. It's just consistency is key. You don't have to worry. You just do that.

You know, you take five minutes. Every pay you go and do it. Some brokerage even allow you to do it automatically and then you're good to go. Yeah, there's a lot of work involved with maintaining a single stock portfolio, like individual stocks that probably a 20 or 22 year old will probably, even if they do it themselves, will probably, I don't want to say not good enough to do. do it, but probably just not knowledgeable enough unless they've been, you know, kind of researching it for quite a while. So the ETF route kind of gives them a one-click solution. On the fidelity front, they have FEQT, which is their 100% equity. Oh, okay, I thought F grow was the most equity, but I must have missed it. No, they have, well, I don't know how FGRO is designed, but

FEQT is a factor fund. So it's an all-in-one fund. It has less holdings than something like XEQT because it's a factor fund. And just like by factor fund, they'll have momentum ETFs inside of that, that kind of track stocks that are going up a lot recently. They'll have value. They'll have what else would there be quality, which would kind of analyze and screen the ones with the highest returns on equity. So that one would make more sense than NF grow because, yeah, it's full equities. And it still has a little bit of that crypto, Bitcoin exposure at 2.8%. And it's very small.

But again, F grow, that's the issue, right? That you're paying double the fees. Yes. Yeah, then the other ones. Yeah. Yeah, it's done quite well. Like FEQT has. I think it's outperforming these other ones a little bit.

But I mean, it holds a lot of momentum funds, which is probably going to be the case for that. When the market dips, corrects remains to be seen. But yeah, it's kind of a different perspective, a lot less holdings because obviously it screens them out for the factor it wants exposure to. But yeah, that's another one you can have a look at. Yeah, and I, we'd have to do some research, but I think I know there's been studies and I'm pretty sure that for the most part, retail investors that pick individual stocks tend to underperform the market. Oh, yes. I know I recall, yeah, reading that in the past, I'd like to quote some specific studies, but maybe we can do a segment on that in the future.

So keep that in mind. I'm sure some of you have done much better than the market. especially if you're disciplined, you have kind of a systematic approach in place. Maybe you have certain ratios, certain KPIs that you look at for each company, and you do all your research, and you've done quite well. And that's great. But I think a lot of people get into the situation where they get really excited with like the hot new stuff and they end up overexposing and maybe they outperform the market for a little bit,

but then they get absolutely destroyed. So just keep that in mind that it is tricky, and you can make a whole lot of mistakes by selecting individual stocks. I mean, I've made plenty of mistakes. I have a bit of a hybrid approach. I have funds and individual stock. But I've made some mistakes myself too. I know you have.

So I think it's just important to remember. I know we talk a lot about stocks, but I think ETFs, especially those low cost fees, ETFs, especially the all in ones. But even if you choose an SMP 500 or an all world ETF, whatever you choose, oftentimes, you'll just find that you're beating the markets with less work. Or you're not beating, but you're matching the market. Just slightly less.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You're matching the market with less work. Yeah. And I think a lot of people go the right route in terms of researching stocks and picking stocks. But I think like most of the underperformance is just from them blowing up accounts when things get bad. Like you can go through, you can go through the completely correct process of buying an

individual stock, but when the market gets tough and you panic, sell it after it falls 30%. I think that's where the vast majority of the underperformance comes from. So it's not necessarily that you lack the knowledge to do it. You just kind of need ice in your veins when the market's inevitably, because it's a matter of, of when, not if they go down 25, 30, percent again. I mean, it's happened throughout history and you just got to be prepared for those swings if you do own individual stocks. Yeah, you've got to embrace the chaos and not panic. And I mean, the ETS will do the same thing, but I think it's kind of a, it's an element of, you know, you own

everything. You're not digging into these individual companies that might be down less, down more. That's a little bit easier for somebody to buy an all equity fund and just kind of hold it through that rather than, you know, an individual stock in their portfolio that's down. 50% when the market's down 25, they tend to get into a bit of panic mode and kind of start doubting their decisions. And that's where it gets where people get into big trouble. Yeah, because and also right, the sizing, because when you have a, the ETF, a broad base index ETF for an all in one ETF, usually while deciding it's going to be super well diversify, you just, for the most part, you own like almost the whole market in the world, right?

Whereas individual portfolio oftentimes they'll have oversized position into like a single company, 5, 10%. I mean, just using my own past mistakes in 2022, I was down almost 40%. And if I just held the SMP 500, I think it was down like 20% for that. 24, I think, something like that. 20, okay. But anyways, I did way worse than if I had just had the SMP 500. And for the most part, I was picking my own stocks.

sad. My exposure to Bitcoin was significant. And I learned a lot of lessons from 2022, but that's just a personal experience as to like you can get really, yeah, you can get some big drawdowns that are way worse the market. To my defense, I did way better than the index in the years prior. So it made up for that. And I did much better than the index for the following two years. So my returns have been beating the markets. But it's not. easy when you look back at a year in the moment. I'd be lying if I said it was easy to be like, oh, wow, my portfolio is now down 40% from the highs. So I think it's just just a personal story just to show that yes, picking stock, we like doing it. We love researching companies.

We wouldn't be doing this if we didn't like to. But emotionally, it can be a bit of a rollercoaster, even more than just picking index CTFs. Yes. And I'll give like a very crystal clear example of this, if you had two identical investors, same size portfolio, one of them owned, what would it be XIU, the TSX60 index fund, and the other one owned the exact holdings of the TSX60 in individual stocks. I would almost guarantee if that person had a bit of a quick trigger finger in terms of, you know, panicking when stocks go down. The fact that they're looking at 60 individual stocks and can see the big moves in each individual stock, they would probably outperform or underperform the one just owning the index fund because they own the exact same thing, but the person

who owns XIU sees one ticker, one price, whereas somebody who owns the 60 holdings will see a wide variety of dips, you know, increases all that type of stuff. So yeah, identical situation. And, you know, there's a lot more owning the 60 holdings is a lot more mental. taxing and you need to be able to get over that and kind of just focus on the long term, which a lot of people kind of struggle to do. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I think we've touched enough about this on this now. So we'll, I think we'll wrap it up, call it an episode. I just want to thank everyone for listening and all the support that we're getting. Just a reminder we are posting some more content on YouTube. So if you're interested in that,

just make sure you subscribe. I think we were closing in on 20. 500 subscriber, which is quite good. We were like not even, I think we were just at 1,000 at the beginning of the year. So, yeah, cruising. So just by just, you know, slowly ticking up. But I think our content's getting better and better. Our video editing skills are improving. So make sure you check that out.

But if not, we will be back for our news and earnings episode this Thursday. And like I said on the last one, if there are some companies that we didn't talk about during earnings season, shoot us an email or reach out to us on. and we can add them to the slate when things start slowing down. Probably will start slowing down in the next couple weeks, I would think, right? So we can touch on those if we miss them during earnings season. If not, we will see you on Thursday. The Canadian Investor Podcasts 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.