Here are three industrial stocks hitting new highs. Those gains are largely due to the Canadian government’s plan to increase spending on infrastructure projects, which will spur demand for Finning and Toromont’s construction equipment. The government is also eliminating the luxury tax on private jets, which should lead to more orders for Bombardier.


Even after their impressive rise, we still see two of the three as buys. However, we recommend investors cap their exposure to the cyclical Manufacturing sector at a third or less of their portfolio.

CENOVUS ENERGY INC. $25 is a buy. The company (Toronto symbol CVE; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Resources sector; Shares outstanding: 1.8 billion; Market cap: $45.0 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.8; Dividend yield 3.1%; TSINetwork Rating: Average;

Despite the impact of U.S. tariffs on freight volumes, we continue to recommend all investors own at least one of Canada’s railways—Canadian National or Canadian Pacific Kansas City—given their importance to the national economy.


While CN’s shares are down about 5% since the start of 2025, we feel the stock remains an appealing buy. That’s because the company’s strong focus on efficiency should spur its earnings growth over the next few years.

Exchange-traded funds are set up to mirror the performance of a stock-market index or sub-index. They hold a more or less fixed selection of securities that represent the holdings of that index or sub-index and will allow the fund to “track” its performance.


The MER (Management Expense Ratio) is generally much lower on traditional ETFs than on conventional mutual funds. That’s because most traditional ETFs take a much simpler approach to investing. Instead of actively managing clients’ investments, ETF providers invest so as to mirror the holdings and performance of a particular stock-market index.



ETFs practice this “passive” fund management style, in contrast to the “active” management that conventional mutual funds traditionally provide at much higher costs.

Canadian banks and insurance companies have delivered strong performances over the past year, beating the main stock market indexes and their U.S. peers by a considerable margin. Over the longer term, U.S. Financial Services (banks, insurers, and financial services combined) have also performed better than the S&P 500 index.


Great performance by Canadian banks and insurers



The graph below highlights the strong share price performance of the Canadian banks and insurers over the past one and five years. The last year has been particularly good for Canadian financials, with their 34% return easily beating their U.S. counterparts.

To succeed as an investor, you need to overcome the temptation to think that you can succeed as a fair-weather investor—one who is in the market when prices are going up, and out of the market during the inevitable downturns.


If you try to do that, you will wind up selling when much of the damage is done, and buying your way back in when much of the recovery has already taken place. Worse, you may wind up buying back in at higher prices than you got when you sold.

his month, we highlight a new ETF from BMO that invests in physical commodities, as well as a leveraged single-stock ETF from one of Canada’s smaller ETF managers.


BMO Broad Commodity ETF $30.58 (CBOE symbol ZCOM) invests in a range of physical commodities.



The ETF tracks the Bloomberg Commodity Index. The current segment split of the ETF is Agriculture (28%), Energy (26%), Precious Metals (25%), Industrial Metals (15%), and Livestock (6%). The commodities are not held in a physical form, but rather through the use of derivative instruments.

After a dismal period between 2021 and 2023, major Chinese companies have performed very well since the start of 2024—top holdings in the iShares China Large-Cap ETF (FXI) such as Xiaomi, Tencent, Trip.aom and Alibaba all doubled over that time period.


Notably, however, the top performer among the ETF holdings over the past two years was the designer toy company Pop Mart International, with a 10-fold rise in its stock price.



Pop Mart was founded as a retail store in 2010 by Wang Ning in Beijing, China. Pop Mart became a cultural phenomenon by focusing on youth trends and the growing appetite for collectible art toys.

The Chinese economy expanded rapidly between 2000 and 2019, when annual growth averaged a high 9%. It has recovered from the pandemic, but its growth trajectory going forward is uncertain. That’s because of factors like the trade war with the U.S. and other Western countries (including a ban on AI chip exports to China), as well as a major property sector downturn. Longer term, the country’s aging population is another major concern.


Meantime, here’s a look at an ETF that provides exposure to the top Chinese publicly listed companies.

Banks and insurance companies have performed strongly over the past year, easily beating the main market indices. However, banks, in particular, use a lot of debt to boost returns, and are prone to volatility when they encounter problems.


We’ve always said most investors should diversify within the finance sector by holding not just banks, but also insurers, fund managers and so on. Notably, a blend of banks and insurance companies produces a better risk and return profile than a portfolio of just banks.



We provide more detail about the risks and returns of the main financial groups in the Supplement on page 120.