Canadian stocks are hitting record highs, so where should investors look next? On this episode of In the Money with Amber Kanwar, veteran money manager Lyle Stein of Forvest Canada breaks down why he’s leaning into dividend paying resource stocks as the backbone of a portfolio. Listen now on Apple, Spotify or YouTube!
Canadians love their bank stocks — and for good reason. They’ve delivered decades of strong returns and dividend growth. But what’s the easiest, low-cost way to own all six of the Big Banks without picking favourites? Enter Hamilton ETFs. Learn more about the Hamilton Canadian Bank Equal Weight Index ETF (HEB) — which comes with no management fee until 2026 — and the Hamilton Enhanced Canadian Bank ETF (HCAL), which uses modest 25% leverage to boost exposure and dividend yield.
Here are five things to know today:
AI over everything: Futures are mostly higher this morning led by tech stocks while gold pulls back modestly. OpenAI completed a deal that allows employees to sell shares and it values the AI company at $500 billion making it the world’s most valuable private company. No small feat for a company who just released it’s first major project in 2022 and is now more valuable than 97% of S&P 500 companies. Markets are higher despite economic data painting a picture of weak job growth in America. As the US government shutdown enters its second day, investors are left to rely on second-tier economic data that would typically be ignored by the market. Yesterday the ADP payrolls showed a 32,000 decline in jobs vs the expected 51,000 gain. While it is notoriously an unreliable predictor of the non farm payroll report, it is all investors have right now. This morning the Challenger job cut report showed 54,000 job cut announcements in September, which is less than August. However, as Scotia’s Derek Holt points out, with nearly 1 million job cut announcements so far this year, 2025 is shaping up to be the fifth worst year for layoff announcements in the 36-year history of the data.
Credit check: Shares of TransUnion (-9%) and Equifax (-8%) are plunging in the pre-market. The credit reporting agencies fell after Fair Isaac (+15%) announced a program to allow mortgage lenders the option to calculate and distribute FICO scores directly to customers. Fair Isaac is the pioneer of the FICO score – a measure of consumer credit risk that has become standard in lending. TransUnion and Equifax are falling because they sell data needed to generate the score and with Fair Isaac trying to cut them out of the mix, this could dent profits according to analysts. “By introducing a licensing program for tri-merge resellers (ie TransUnion, Equifax), Fair Issac is effectively taking away the ability of the credit bureaus to mark up the FICO score,” wrote Surinder Thind of Jefferies, “For the bureaus to take price, they will now have to directly negotiate with the lenders, as well as compete with each other.”
Pipe dreams: The Alberta government plans to test Prime Minister Mark Carney’s willingness to approve pipeline projects in Canada. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said the province plans to file an application with a newly created federal agency meant to fast-track projects to build a new oil pipeline to BC. Current regulations and laws have made building a new pipeline in Canada untenable, and Carney would need to repeal things like a tanker ban on the north coast of BC to make it happen.
Down to the wire: MEG Energy shareholders have less than a week left to vote on the proposed takeover offer by Cenovus. Yesterday, top shareholder Cole Smead revealed he would be voting against the transaction in a post on X. “In case anyone is wondering, we will be voting against the CVE offer for our MEG shares,” said Smead who owns about 1 million shares and is the 19th biggest shareholder. The deadline to vote is October 7th. Proxy advisory firms ISS and Glass Lewis have both come out in the past few days in support of the Cenovus offer, despite the higher offer on the table from Strathcona Resources. The offer by Cenovus values MEG at around $28/share which is exactly where the stock is currently trading suggesting that investors are pricing in the likelihood of this deal going through.
Tesla watch: We should be getting Tesla’s delivery figures for the quarter any minute this morning which could move the stock today. Shares are up 2% ahead of the release. Analysts expect the company delivered about 443,000 cars for the quarter. While deliveries are down compared to last year, investors will be looking for signs the magnitude of the decline is easing. Shares have been on a tear into the print, up 106% since the March low and trading at a 10-month high helping Elon Musk retain the title of richest man in the world.
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