Mid January 2025 and Cautious Markets Ahead

 

With all the focus on the US and tariffs currently, Canada has it's own issues to work out as the government sort of sits in limbo until Parliament resumes in March after the ruling party, the Liberals vote on their new leader and Prime Minister. It looks like a Federal election could be coming later in 2025.

That's all rolling the stock markets plus inflation and interest rates could react to tariffs which Trump wants to add to Canada's exports looking for better trade deals to favour the US.

Meanwhile, in Canada and with the banks, TD continues to be one of the most active stocks these days as it's price is above $80 CAD currently rallying about $10 from a recent low. With energy, CNQ, Canadian Natural Resources is on that most active list off and on in the energy sector. Two of my most watched sectors as I accumulate shares in companies in both sectors moving forward.

It's been interesting reads from different Bloggers since the New Year rang in and how 2024 moved their portfolios. Different approaches, patience and sticking to their plans. I prefer large cap stocks such as in the top twenty by yield in the TSX 60 and others with low volatility. There's no management fees holding individual stocks and lately, I've been looking over some higher yield ETFs which have no management fees these days but always wise to dig into the fine print and prospectus, etc.

I'll use these added distributions from ETFs to buy more stocks, such as ENB, Enbridge and Fortis, FTS in February before the ex-dividend dates along with other stocks in that busy month for stocks in my portfolio.

Personally, I like the challenge of getting my portfolio up over 6% for a yearly gain, which is not difficult some years when the Markets are favourable. When Markets are down, I look forward to the dividend increases from my stocks plus gains which adds to my total return.  

I recently read the latest post from the Millennial Revolution Blog about their 2024 portfolio where they are into index tracking ETFs with 25% each in the US stocks, TSX, international and preferred shares. Re-balancing when needed with impressive numbers. I read their book when it came out called ... Quit Like a Millionaire.

Interesting about the preferred share ETF; ZPR, BMO Laddered Preferred Share Index with a current 5.8% yield in that article and a brief summary of how it works.

I look forward to looking over my stocks and any changes with the corporation and banks heading into the last half of January, 2025 and ahead to February where Utilities and the Insurance/Financial sectors are on my mind.

I'm overweight with the utility/energy stock, EMA in my portfolio but with it's natural gas assets in the US and AI Data Centre builds and expansion going ahead ... that could add up to additional revenue for the company. EMA, Emera Inc. has an ex-dividend date of January 31st, 2025 with a 5.59% current yield.