The Week in 60 Seconds

Monday's jobs number didn't just beat — it lapped the field. August payrolls printed 162,000 against a 55,000 forecast, and the cozy cuts-are-coming story got shoved in a drawer. Ottawa then slapped tariffs of up to 50% on hundreds of U.S. products, short-term Treasury yields tagged 52-week highs, diesel ripped more than 60% year-over-year on Iran tensions, and crude punched through US$100. The TSX ate it worse than the S&P, including a 1.1% down day, as rate-sensitive names and importers took the hit while Canadian energy exporters caught a geopolitical bid. BNPP even flipped to two Fed hikes this year. Friday finally bounced — NASDAQ +1.0% on tech, with Nvidia reportedly circling a $10B slice of Anthropic's planned mega-IPO — but it felt like a breath, not a regime change. Net-net: easing is on ice, $6 diesel is a real margin line, and if your TFSA is packed with duration, this was the week the calendar started working against you. The practice book told the same story in miniature: one volume-confirmed win, two rotation-bruised losses.

The NASDAQ Race Update

Monday's NASDAQ close was 26,507. By the weekend bounce it sat at 26,333 — down 174 points, roughly 0.7%. Our simulated book did not beat that. GMIN.TO's +3.41% earnings-surprise win was the only green light; ALK's -0.54% fade and PNG.V's -5.59% air-pocket dragged the equal-weight score to -2.72%. The NASDAQ pulled ahead. The play to close the gap isn't a new oscillator — it's refusing to enter a catalyst name unless volume is already printing above the 20-day average.

Practice Investment Scoreboard

Simulated positions reviewed across the seven episodes (prior-week entries; results as reported on-air):

Reviewed-book win rate: 33% (1-for-3). Equal-weight cumulative P&L: -2.72%.

Celebrate the GMIN.TO fill — that's how an earnings surprise is supposed to work when the tape agrees. Don't excuse PNG.V. The Q2 beat was real; the rotation was realer. Same rule, opposite result.

Strategy of the Week

Stack three independent signals before you click buy.

1. What it is. Require relative strength, sector-rotation flows, and institutional options activity to agree on the same day. On Wednesday, only Meta cleared all three — a $186 million short-put print plus $6.4 million of calls, sitting on RS leadership and sector inflows. ▶ Episode 167 · 2026-09-11 One factor can be noise. Three lining up narrows the range of likely outcomes.
2. When to use it. Exactly in weeks like this — choppy, rotational, macro-noisy — when a lone earnings beat, an RSI cross, or a hot headline is more likely to fake you out than pay you. Covered-call overlays on broad ETFs can still make sense in a sideways regime, but only after you've mapped breadth and confirmed the lack of directional conviction. The stack is how you avoid forcing momentum tactics into a range.
3. How to set it up on Wealthsimple, Questrade, or IBKR. Pull the name versus its sector ETF and versus the TSX or S&P — you want it outperforming both. Confirm the sector ETF itself is taking share (energy had the geopolitical bid this week; long-duration growth did not). Then check unusual options activity: IBKR option volume is enough; a scanner such as Unusual Whales is faster. Enter only if all three line up and share volume is above the 20-day average. If you do nothing else Monday, run that stack on your watchlist. Bonus filter from Monday's dividend-growth screen: if a name just hiked its payout, run a quick DCF on the new dividend against free-cash-flow coverage and demand a payout ratio under 60% before you treat undervaluation as an entry. ▶ Episode 163 · 2026-09-07

What to Watch Next Week

• FOMC, September 15–16. Futures were pricing 50–70% odds of a hike. BNPP called for two hikes starting in September; Goldman still doesn't see the economic case. A hike or a hawkish hold leans on utilities, REITs, and unprofitable growth inside TFSAs. A dovish surprise would snap those same names higher. Write your rate-sensitive list down before the statement so you are not improvising into the first 15-minute candle. ▶ Episode 168 · 2026-09-12
• Bank of Canada, later this month. Still data-dependent, with markets having priced modest cuts that this week's U.S. jobs-and-yields tape just made harder. Canadian financials and housing-linked names will trade the path of easing, not the press-conference adjectives. ▶ Episode 165 · 2026-09-09
• Crude above US$100 and diesel through $6/gallon. Export-oriented Canadian producers can keep catching the geopolitical bid; transport, logistics, and anything with a fat diesel bill can keep leaking margin. ▶ Episode 166 · 2026-09-10 ▶ Episode 169 · 2026-09-13
• Tariff pass-through. The 50% duties are live. Screen holdings with greater than 30% U.S.-sourced revenue and decide, on purpose, whether you still want that exposure. ▶ Episode 164 · 2026-09-08
• AI infrastructure follow-through. Nvidia's reported interest in Anthropic is a pointer toward balance-sheet-strong infrastructure names, not every deck with AI in the title.

This Week's Listener Challenge

Fifteen minutes, this weekend. Open your TFSA in Wealthsimple, Questrade, or IBKR. Write down your five largest holdings. For each, check three boxes: (1) Has volume been above the 20-day average on the up days? (2) Is more than 30% of revenue U.S.-sourced — i.e., sitting in the tariff blast radius? (3) Is the forward P/E below the sector median, with a free-cash-flow yield above 6%? Highlight any name that fails two of three. That's your Monday watchlist, built from this week's actual playbook — volume confirmation, supply-chain exposure, and value as yields rise.

Canadian Corner

The TFSA is the right account for this rotation because you can re-cut rate-sensitive exposure without a tax-lot headache. Two Canada-specific pressures collided this week: hotter U.S. jobs, which delays Bank of Canada easing too, and the new tariff wall, which taxes importers and, in theory, rewards domestic suppliers. If you hold Canadian utilities, REITs, or other rate-duration proxies, the next BoC meeting is now a live risk, not a scheduled yawn. If you hold energy, the $100 oil tape is a gift for exporters and a cost for anyone moving freight. Washington chatter about the Canada-U.S. exchange rate is extra noise — don't let FX anecdotes override the holdings screen. One constructive Canadian example from Monday: Hammond Power Solutions screened as roughly 33% undervalued after a dividend hike, a reminder that a simple DCF-on-the-new-payout check still works in stable capital-goods names when payout ratios stay under 60% and volume confirms. The same screen maps cleanly into an RRSP or FHSA; the TFSA is just where you can act on it fastest.

The Bottom Line

This week proved that a catalyst without volume is just a headline — and headlines don't compound.

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