Futures flat, sales at BRP fall, Canada aims at Tesla, GameStop buys bitcoin
In lieu of attention from his parents, my third child has a secure attachment to a stuffed bunny. This bunny went missing at exactly bedtime last night. I’ve turned every cushion in the house, looked under every table, checked the cars outside, called a neighbour to see if it wandered over. Nothing. I think I have to wait a full 24 hours until I can file a missing persons but honestly…I don’t know if we will make it that long!
Don’t miss our conversation with Rebecca Teltscher of Newhaven Asset Management. In this episode of In the Money with Amber Kanwar, she breaks down how defensive sectors like utilities, telcos, and energy are key to navigating today’s uncertain environment—especially with rising risks of stagflation, tariff tensions, and recession uncertainty
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Stoic: Futures are flat this morning after a mundane session yesterday. This morning copper futures have surged to a record high on reports from Bloomberg that US tariffs on imports could be announced in the coming weeks. US President Donald Trump has threatened to levy as much as 25% on all copper imports in a bid to boost domestic production. Shares of Hudbay Minerals and Teck Resources are lower in the pre-market, despite higher copper prices, as the Canadian base metal producers could face reduced demand. The effect of these tariffs will be higher input prices on everything made with copper. Also known as inflation. The Canadian markets continue to benefit from the inflation trade with gold mining companies heavy on the index. Despite tariffs on our country, our stock market is outperforming the American stock market. BMO’s Brian Belski expects this to continue given better valuations on the TSX. He also points out that just because the S&P 500 corrected, doesn’t mean the Canadian markets will correct. “There has been no Canadian correction or bear market that wasn’t also a US correction or bear market over the last decade, but there have been three US corrections that did not result in a Canadian correction,” Belski wrote in a note to clients. That is not to say that tariffs aren’t leaving their fingerprints all over our economy. Yesterday’s provincial budget from Quebec projected a record deficit in part because of planned $2.6 billion in spending to offset the impact of tariffs.
Ski-don’t: Watch shares of BRP at the open after the sea-doo and ski-doo maker reported near 20% drop in sales and yanked their financial forecasts citing tariff uncertainty. Consumers have pulled back in a major way from recreational vehicles since the height of the pandemic but tariff concerns are adding fuel to the fire. “BRP was already facing the prospect of another year of a downmarket for powersports and now faces the much more significant prospect of a 25% tariff on all Mexican and Canadian imports into the U.S. (~60% of the market for powersports),” wrote National Bank’s Cameron Doerksen. However, put this stock on your shopping list if tariffs don’t come to pass says Doerksen. “If this level of tariff does not materialize or comes at a much lower level, we see upside for the stock form current depressed levels,” he wrote. A big “if” at this point but given the stock is at the lowest level since 2021 even a little bit of good news could lead to a bounce.
Nice rebate you got there, be a shame if anything happened to it: Shares of Tesla are down in the pre-market after the Canadian government announced all rebate programs for Tesla vehicles will be halted and the company is banned from future EV rebates. Transportation Minister Chrystia Freeland (that will take some getting used to) announced the new measures saying they will be in place as long as “illegitimate and illegal US tariffs are imposed against Canada.” Tesla has claimed $713 million in rebates since 2019.
Easy target: Nvidia is the target of retribution in China according to reports that say the country has been discouraging the use of Nvidia’s chips on “energy efficiency” grounds. The Financial Times says Nvidia is looking to engage with the Chinese government to reduce energy efficiency concerns, but this adds to anxieties about the demand picture for Nvidia. Earlier this week the Chairman of Alibaba, Joseph Tsai, called the spending on AI data centres in the US “astounding” and questioned whether there was a need for such spending. Added pressure is coming from China as DeepSeek sparked a wave of cheaper AI models threatening to undercut the premium offerings by OpenAI and Google. Investors are cautious about this, Nvidia shares have gone nowhere in the last 6 months.
Game.Stop: Shares of GameStop are popping 16% despite a bigger than expected drop in sales. Instead of focusing on the nearly 30% drop in sales, investors are latching on to the announcement that the company will be buying Bitcoin and adding it to its treasury. So that’s where we are in the cycle.
