Carney’s Big Pivot: Jobs, Energy, Housing & Major Projects

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The Canadian Investor 53 min 3 speakers 7 chapters transcribed 4 months ago
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

Simon Belanger 0:01
Investing is simple, but don't confuse that with thinking it's easy. A stock is not just a ticker. At the end of the day, you have to remember that it's a business.
Unknown 0:12
Just my reminder to people who own cyclicals, don't be surprised when there's a cycle.
Simon Belanger 0:17
If there's uncertainty in the markets, there's going to be some great opportunities for investors. This has to be one of the biggest quarters I've seen from this company in quite some time.
Daniel Foch 0:32
All right. We are live once again on a couple of platforms. I think LinkedIn is still trying to figure itself out. But more platforms this week. What are we on? Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram, I think, as well. I think I have to go click a button to go live on Instagram here.
Simon Belanger 0:49
Yeah, maybe we can figure out blue sky and all that stuff.
Daniel Foch 0:52
Yeah, yeah. But yeah, if you want to give me an idea of what we're talking about here today.
Simon Belanger 0:57
Yeah, I think it'll be a fun one today. So we were talking earlier this week looking at employment payroll numbers. Obviously, those were released earlier today for Canada. U.S. employment numbers also released today. Probably talk a little bit about in more detail the monetary policy report. I came out with the Bank of Canada update when they last did the interest rate announcement. The Canada spring update, just talk a little bit about that. I know you have some comments about housing, some of the initiative there. I definitely want to comment a little bit about the major projects office, what they had mentioned in the Canada spring update. And then probably some macro thoughts too, because I listened to almost the whole Berkshire Hathaway thing.
Simon Belanger 1:46
annual meeting with Greg Gable taking over from Warren Buffett. So some really good thoughts from there as well, just kind of how they're seeing the world right now and how they're actually thinking about investing too. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, 100%.
Daniel Foch 2:04
Okay. Well, do you want to kick me off with what you want to start us off with here?
Simon Belanger 2:08
Yeah, let's do employment payroll numbers. So Canada lost 18,000 jobs in April. Unemployment rate increased 20 basis point to 6.9%. Employment rate also decreased 10 basis point to 60.5%. And that's been on a steady decline since 2023 when it peaked around 62%. So before I go on, there was a lot of good information in there, but I just want to hear your thoughts on that.
Daniel Foch 2:36
I mean, it seems like a continuation of a lot of the trends that we've seen over the last year. Public sector jobs up year over year, private sector jobs and self-employed down year over year. I think we're just sort of like the government spending money to suppress certain numbers, right? I mean, it may or may not be their intention, but that's the result of policy. And, you know, we went from sort of post-election hearing that we're going to see 30,000 layoffs in the public sector to... And I think you are on sort of like the OpEx side. I think we talked about this last week, right? It was like kind of just creative accounting, right? Like you're still creating jobs on the CapEx side and it just looks different on the budget because we're spending a lot on these special projects like you've discussed.
Daniel Foch 3:23
So I think that this is where the question becomes like, are we genuinely trying to exercise kind of like, I don't want to use the word austerity, but are we trying to run a leaner budget and have an economy that is... maybe more recessionary or like, or are we trying to run like, you know, kind of the tail end of like, you know, anticipating that the cycle is going to be bad and we're running make work projects and all of these things. And the unemployment numbers sort of look like reflect that to me. One of the things that I will often track with when it comes to unemployment is mortgage delinquencies, right? CBA puts out these numbers on a monthly basis. I'll see if I can screen share them here now.
Daniel Foch 4:00
But basically, you've got mortgage arrears in Canada track quite... Mortgage arrears in Canada track quite tightly to unemployment. And so, you know, the question is like, are we... If you look at historical cycles, assuming that this is kind of going to play out like a historical cycle, unemployment continues to rise and we get to a point where mortgage delinquencies...

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