HOLD

Large position, great future. Lets people such as Uber drivers get paid at the end of the night, instead of waiting 2 weeks for a paycheque. They skim a fee off the top. Biggest risk is customer concentration, working to expand.

BUY

Good story, then bad, now good again. Poor job integrating acquisitions. New CEO, very impressive. Relatively strong collection of assets now being managed properly. Inexpensive. Moved from $5 to $8, will keep going.

HOLD

Pretty well run, but had a bad quarter, stock sold off. Anticipates another bad quarter, and then good news. Lots of cash, just have to synchronize their lumpy businesses. Yield is 7%, but don't be worried. If you own it, hold. If not, let the next quarter come through and assess guidance.

BUY

Great company, a bellwether. Fantastic management. Growth rate for next year or two is great. 

Real risks that customers will make chips in-house or that demand falls. We won't know the answer for awhile, look at earnings size to figure out. His sense is that the wave is just starting, and NVDA will go really hard for 3-4 years. The other chip makers aren't taking market share yet, but just trying to catch up. 

DON'T BUY

Banks have gone sideways for a long time, though you get your 4% yield. His goal is to do better than that. The financial services he likes the most are growing much faster than any of the Canadian banks, with dividends that aren't much below that of the banks.

Though his preferences may be deemed volatile and riskier, there's also the risk of non-performance. TD is fine, but not a lot of growth. See his Top Picks.

SELL

It has its moments from time to time, but overall hasn't been great for awhile. Part of the issue is it's still quite levered. There are other compounding machines, but this one just doesn't get the job done. Sell, and buy something like DSG or CSU.

BUY ON WEAKNESS
Worried about software growth if you're not AI?

Yes, but it's also about international trade, so it could sell off again. But if you pull up the 5-10 year chart, it's a thing of beauty, and that's what you're trying to invest in. Exceptionally well managed, steady compounder. Always looks expensive, but whenever you buy it seems to be up 15-20% a year later. This dip is a great time to buy.

WEAK BUY

If he could own only one, this would be it. Better managed, better strategy, more on point. See his Top Picks.

TOP PICK

Manages online communities. Most of those communities have a chat section, and ChatGPT can be used to provide curated information. The Reddit of Canada, 1/8 the size. Trades at 5.5x earnings, a $9 stock. Multiple expansion could easily take it to $25. Sitting on a potential goldmine. No dividend.

Big, bright future. In his opinion, Reddit isn't of as high a quality, so FORA isn't really competing with the much larger RDDT.

(Analysts’ price target is $13.06)
TOP PICK

Consistently profitable, raising dividend. No bricks and mortar, works with credit unions. Uses AI to follow your tracks to get a more enhanced credit score, so it's a better predictor of a borrower's credit worthiness. We'll need to get data from a credit cycle, but so far credit quality seems to be really strong. Yield is 2.3%.

(Analysts’ price target is $31.10)
TOP PICK

Only $100M market cap, but good liquidity. Doesn't think it will be at $100M for too long. Sophisticated cameras and monitoring systems for parking lots. Really high margins. Will probably grow at 75% a year, this year and next. Should be $3 in 2 years' time. No dividend.

(Analysts’ price target is $1.72)
COMMENT
Conditions for a good small-cap market.

In a typical small- to mid-cap cycle, you get a 7-year run, and then a year or year and a half correction of multiple contraction. So a stock trading at 13-14x, which seems reasonable for a growth stock, suddenly finds itself trading at 5x. It's not that these companies are growing that fast, but it's the multiple expansion at work.

What you need is the psychology of the market to get to the point where it's going to look at these stocks. When you get a correction, money comes out of small caps, valuations fall, usually interest rates are still rising. So the money can only come back in one direction. Once interest rates start to roll over, people start looking for growth. 

Thinks we're in the first year of the next 6 or 7-year cycle. All his Top Picks are under 10x earnings. 

COMMENT
More IPOs on the horizon?

Not sure if we'll see more IPOs. Canada is not a great place to be entrepreneurial. Housing affordability crisis. Entrepreneurs are seen as the bad guys. There are slivers of entrepreneurship and great companies, but until the economy is strong, it won't be a hotbed of business activity. We have to balance our social programs with a strong economy that creates jobs that create tax wealth to pay for those programs.

A little secret is that the TSX 60 is not growing, and there's no incentive or encouragement to grow. So you have to pick growth in Canada where you can find it, and then look to the US or elsewhere.

BUY

Today it surpassed $3-billion in market cap--and Apple. It comes down to their visionary CEO Jensen Huang.

BUY

Yesterday, they reported a fantastic quarter, making it clear that the build-out of data centres is not done and in fact are in the early innings of AI.