The final Fed decision of 2025 may set the tone for the entire 2026 market — and today on In the Money with Amber Kanwar, portfolio manager Brianne Gardner joins Amber to break down what really matters for investors right now. From earnings strength to sector rotation to how much weight you should put on Powell’s language ahead of a potential Fed chair transition, Brianne lays out her top-down roadmap for the year ahead.
This month I am partnering with Questrade—they’re building out some very cool investor tools and have a great promo on right now for our listeners. They’ve rolled out real game-changers: they’ve completely redesigned Questrade Pro, which is in beta testing now; you can trade directly from best-in-class charts with lightning-fast execution, AI tools, a full trader performance dashboard, and more—best part, it’s all free. And starting this December, you can trade assets like real physical gold right inside your account with Quest Metals, just like a stock. For listeners of the podcast, you can use promocode INTHEMONEY (all one word) when you sign up for your first self-directed account and get a $50 cash reward, or open a Questwealth Portfolios account and you’ll get your first $10,000 managed for free for one year. Visit Questrade.com, promocode INTHEMONEY.
This year I decided my act of Christmas cheer would be to hang the lights outside our house myself. After six hours in the cold and three trips to Canadian Tire for more lights, I can say that all that hard work has produced a decidedly mediocre outcome. Yet I feel immense pride looking out at all my hard work. I also feel sympathy for the person who will have to go out in a month and take it all down, because it won’t be me and after reading this it will dawn on my husband what that means for him.
Here are five things to know this morning:
Waiting to exhale: Futures are at a standstill this morning waiting for the Federal Reserve rate decision at 2pm. Will this be the last rate cut of the cycle? It may very well be the last rate cut for Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Indeed, the market seems to be prepared for a “hawkish cut” says bond trader Andrew Brenner at Nat Alliance. “We will wait to see the statement and presser before we say more, but what can Powell say?,” wrote Brenner in his morning note, “He won’t have November data until next week and that will be somewhat stale…So Powell will be non committal, again making it a hawkish cut.” The Bank of Canada will make its rate decision this morning at 9:45am and is expected to keep rates on hold. With the US cutting rates, the BOC on hold and jobs data in Canada coming in hot for the last three months, the Canadian dollar has perked up. After all this central bank hullabaloo attention will turn to Oracle which reports after the bell today. Investors will look for confidence around its debt picture, how exposed it is to a single customer, and whether Larry Ellison plans to use stock sales to fund his hostile bid of Warner Brothers.
Power up: Watch Capital Power at the open forming an investment partnership with Apollo Global for $3 billion in natural gas assets and announcing a binding memo of understanding to supply power to an investment grade data centre developer. The deal with Apollo means the utility company will team up with them to buy natural gas assets in the US, take a working interest of between 25%-50% and operate the assets in exchange for management and performance fees. Separately Capital Power also release financial targets for 2026 and through to 2030 that analysts believe should be well-received. Expect more details about all of this as the company kicks off its investor day this morning. This was a top idea from Brianne Gardner on the podcast calling the recent pullback a buying opportunity.
Ice ice baby: Americold Realty has an activist investor pushing for a strategic review of the embattled cold-storage REIT. Shares of Americold are down 50% over the past year and yesterday around the close of trading Ancora revealed a stake in the company calling it “oversold” with “fixable” problems. Americold is a cold-storage real estate play that keeps food refrigerated or frozen in warehouses before they hit the grocery stores. The company pays an 8% dividend but Ancora says it needs to exit non-core geographies to pay down debt and become a pure play in North America. If they do that, Ancora believes the shares can surge 190% over three years. Jeff Olin of Vision Capital was on the podcast in September and said he would be a buyer noting that freezer demand in general is down because of the economy and that these kind of assets will always be supply constrained. “There is a moat around cold storage. You can’t just build a cold-storage facility; you need global food-processor/food-distributor relationships, etc,” he said. At the time, he said the dividend yield was sustainable. You can watch what he said here.
What’s in a logo?: Shares of Cracker Barrel are dropping 5% after retail sales plunged and it cut its financial targets for next year following the disastrous logo change in August. The restaurant chain sparked backlash when it unveiled a modernized text-only logo that replaced its “Uncle Herschel” image. Conservative critics called it “woke” ultimately leading the company to revert back to the original branding. Citi is maintaining its sell rating on the stock, saying it will remain under pressure until traffic and sales show “sustained improvement.”
Back to your roots: Watch shares of Roots at the open after the retailer reported higher sales, increased margins and better profitability than last year. The small-cap Canadiana retailer has been on a tear this year up nearly 60% as the company went from two years of falling sales and profit to growth in 2025. CEO Meghan Roach said she expects the momentum to continue into the fourth quarter. Take a look at the Gen Z’er in your life and you’ll probably notice they aren’t wearing nice jeans and a “going out top” like the women of my generation. These kids live in sweatpants and cozy casual making Roots the ultimate Gen Z trade.
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