Modern Investing Techniques — Episode 16

Modern Investing Techniques – Episode sixteen (Expanded Script – two thousand four hundred seventy-eight words) Hey everyone, welcome back to Modern Investing Techniques, episode sixteen. I’m Patrick, coming to you from Vancouver on this Thursday, April ninth, 2026. Whether you’re listening on your commute across the Prairies, while grabbing coffee in Toronto, or squeezing this in during your lunch break in Calgary, I’m glad you’re here. Today we’re diving deep into how surging fuel prices and a very fragile Middle East ceasefire are creating clear winners and losers across Canadian agriculture, electric vehicles, and gold miners. We’ll break down the market action, spotlight a practical rotation strategy you can actually implement in your own T F S A or R R S P, walk through today’s Practice Investment, review our simulated track record with complete transparency, and share execution lessons that can save you real money when volatility spikes. Let’s get into it. Before we touch a single number, the standard reminder: everything we discuss on this show is strictly for education and entertainment. The Practice Investment of the Day is a simulated trade using no real money whatsoever. I am not a licensed financial advisor, and nothing in this episode constitutes financial advice, investment recommendations, or a solicitation to buy or sell any security. Markets involve risk of loss. Past performance does not predict future results. Always do your own due diligence and consult a qualified financial advisor before putting any of your hard-earned capital to work. The host and Nerra Network have no fiduciary relationship with listeners. Let’s start with the tape. This morning North American markets opened with genuine conviction after several days of choppy, headline-driven trading. The S&P 500 was sitting at six thousand seven hundred eighty-three, up a solid 2.5 percent on the session. The NASDAQ Composite pushed even harder, reaching twenty-two thousand six hundred thirty-five and posting a 2.8 percent gain. Here at home, the T S X Composite opened at thirty-three thousand six hundred twenty-one, gaining a respectable 1.2 percent. What’s driving this coordinated strength? The market is digesting a fragile Gulf ceasefire agreement that has allowed oil to rebound sharply while simultaneously reminding everyone that supply risks remain elevated because access to the Strait of Hormuz is still constrained. In plain language, the truce is holding for now, but nobody trusts it to last. That uncertainty keeps a floor under energy prices and pushes capital toward real assets. At the same time, BlackRock’s Helen Jewell and senior E U officials both cautioned this morning that current consensus earnings estimates still look too optimistic given sticky inflationary pressures and the lingering threat of stagflation. For Canadian investors managing T F S A, R R S P, or F H S A accounts, this environment means we must stay hyper-aware of how energy input costs ripple through domestic sectors and how gold volatility can swing portfolio values overnight. Those two forces—energy cost pressure and gold’s safe-haven bid—are exactly what we’re going to turn into an actionable edge rather than just reacting to headlines. That brings us naturally to today’s Strategy Spotlight. The framework I call “input cost rotation into beneficiaries of energy price spikes.” This isn’t some complicated hedge-fund black box; it’s a repeatable process that any disciplined investor can run on Questrade, Wealthsimple, or Interactive Brokers. Here’s how it works in practice. First, you systematically identify companies or sectors whose revenues, margins, or competitive positioning actually improve when energy and fuel prices rise sharply. These become your overweight candidates. At the same time, you deliberately trim or avoid pure cost-bearers—companies whose input costs go up but who lack pricing power or substitution tailwinds. Right now the setup feels especially timely. Reports out of Manitoba this week highlighted that farmers are staring at dramatically higher fuel and fertilizer costs just as seeding season begins. That pain for traditional agriculture can become a tailwind for precision-agriculture technology, certain fertilizer-efficient crop developers, and, interestingly, for electric vehicles if higher gasoline prices finally push hesitant Canadian consumers over the adoption cliff. We’re also seeing Canadian plants and charging infrastructure continuing to expand, which could create a domestic demand catalyst for battery and supply-chain names listed on the T S X. Implementation is straightforward. On your broker platform you screen for Canadian-listed E V manufacturers, battery technology firms, and charging infrastructure plays, then apply a “rising oil as tailwind” filter. Next you compare their free-cash-flow yields and return-on-invested-capital metrics against traditional auto or agricultural equipment names to isolate relative value. Historically, this style of rotation has delivered the cleanest outperformance in the first three to six months of a sustained energy-price shock—exactly what we saw in 2014 after the ISIS-driven oil spike and again in 2022 during the Russia-Ukraine supply shock. The strategy tends to work best when inflation surprises to the upside because input-cost winners can pass those costs along while pure cyclicals cannot. Of course, no strategy is without risk. A rapid, credible resolution to the ceasefire could collapse the energy premium within days. Policy subsidies for E Vs or agriculture can also distort relative pricing and blunt the rotational edge. That’s why I always insist this rotation must be married to strong fundamental anchors—positive earnings revisions, clean balance sheets, and visible free-cash-flow growth—rather than being a pure macro bet. Which brings us cleanly to today’s Practice Investment. Our Practice Investment of the Day is a weekly hold in Fortuna Mining Corporation, ticker FSM on both the T S X and the N Y S E. This is, as always, a completely simulated trade for educational purposes only—no real dollars are at risk. The core thesis is a fundamental production-beat play inside a gold-volatility regime. We are entering the position on Monday’s open and plan to hold through Friday’s close. The catalyst is concrete and quantifiable: Fortuna just reported first-quarter 2026 production of seventy-two thousand eight hundred seventy-two gold-equivalent ounces from its West African and Latin American operations. That beat expectations and gives us a rock-solid fundamental anchor while geopolitical tensions in the Middle East continue to support elevated gold volatility. On the technical side the stock is trading comfortably above its 50-day moving average. The 14-day R S I sits at neutral levels, neither overbought nor oversold, which gives us room for upside without immediate mean-reversion risk. Even better, volume over the past week has run 18 percent above the 20-day average, confirming institutional accumulation near the six dollars and eighty cents support zone visible on the weekly chart. For risk management we set an explicit invalidation: a decisive breakdown below six dollars and fifty-five cents—the recent swing low—would trigger an immediate exit. That level caps our maximum acceptable loss at approximately six percent of the position. Our target for this weekly hold is a 4 to 9 percent gain by Friday’s close. Confidence level sits at medium. We have a clear production catalyst and historical evidence that gold miners tend to outperform during Middle East tension, but the ceasefire’s fragility introduces one material uncertainty. That balanced view is exactly why we size positions conservatively and always define invalidation levels in advance. This simulated weekly hold is meant to demonstrate how to marry hard production data with macro tailwinds instead of simply chasing price momentum. You learn to quantify output beats, set explicit technical invalidation levels, and practice the patience required to hold through mid-week noise. Those three skills—quantification, risk definition, and patience—separate systematic investors from headline chasers, win or lose on any single trade. While we’re on the topic of executing under volatility, let’s talk about one of the costliest mistakes I see retail investors make when geopolitical headlines hit. Imagine, for a moment, that you decided to buy 500 shares of a Canadian gold producer right after news of fresh strikes on Lebanon crossed the wires last night. Your market order filled at eighteen dollars and forty-five cents. Sounds reasonable until you realize the prevailing bid was actually eighteen dollars and thirty-two cents and the ask never dipped below eighteen dollars and fifty-eight cents during the first twelve minutes of trading. That means the bid-ask spread had ballooned from its normal four-cent level all the way to twenty-six cents. Market makers widened spreads to protect themselves against headline risk while algorithms rapidly repriced implied volatility. In today’s environment, spreads on T S X listed resource names can expand between 300 and 600 percent in the first half hour after major geopolitical news. On a nine dollars,225 position that translated into an immediate 1.4 percent slippage—money that vanished before your position even had a chance to work. The pro tip most retail investors miss is to always check the 20-day average spread and current order-book depth on your broker’s Level 2 window before hitting the buy button. Institutions routinely wait for the spread to compress back below its ten-day median before adding meaningful size. The biggest conceptual mistake is treating all stocks as equally liquid during stress. Instead, I recommend entering with a limit order no worse than the 15-minute volume-weighted average price minus half the current spread. You should also size every position so that even a 25-basis-point slippage stays comfortably inside your one-percent maximum portfolio risk rule. Master these execution mechanics and you’ll keep far more of your edge instead of donating it to wider spreads. Once you’ve tightened up execution, the next sustainable edge comes from paying attention to structural trends and regulatory developments. Two practical tools released this week can sharpen your process in exactly this kind of environment. First, Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) released updated guidance that buckets token launches into three distinct categories, each with tightened disclosure and governance standards for stablecoins, real-world assets, and other digital assets. For Canadian investors who already have exposure—or are considering exposure—to tokenized real estate or commodity streams, this clarity is valuable. You can now evaluate which offshore vehicles meet institutional-grade standards and allocate inside your T F S A or R R S P through crypto-friendly brokers with greater confidence. The framework essentially hands you a ready-made checklist to avoid low-quality issuers that have plagued the space in past cycles. Second, BlackRock highlighted its long-term equity screen that focuses on four key criteria: durable competitive moats, greater than 15 percent return on invested capital, positive earnings revisions, and low correlation to oil prices. The beauty is you can replicate this screen in seconds using free tools on Trading View or Finviz. It helps T F S A investors systematically separate structural winners from cyclical noise. Both of these tools pair beautifully with the input-cost rotation strategy we discussed earlier, giving you a repeatable, rules-based way to tilt your portfolio toward beneficiaries rather than victims of the current macro regime. Speaking directly to one of the questions I’ve received in the listener mailbag: will rising gas prices actually help Canada’s E V sector? The data suggests a qualified yes. Higher fuel costs stemming from Middle East tensions tend to accelerate the consumer shift toward electric vehicles, especially in provinces with strong carbon-pricing mechanisms. At the same time, Canadian battery plants and charging infrastructure continue to expand, creating a potential demand catalyst for domestic E V supply-chain names. While oil benchmarks remain below USone hundred dollars, the rebound driven by persistent shipping risks through the Strait of Hormuz provides sustained margin support for Canadian energy producers and royalty trusts—if the truce stays tenuous. We also saw Mercedes report a disappointing drop in first-quarter sales during what the company itself called a transition year for the China market. That weakness underscores ongoing pressure in the luxury E V transition and may prompt investors to reallocate away from pure-play European autos toward North American battery and infrastructure beneficiaries. Meanwhile, the E U’s top economy official cautioned that stagflation risk lingers despite the Iran ceasefire. Low growth paired with rising inflation reinforces the case for inflation-hedging assets such as gold producers and real assets held inside Canadian tax-advantaged accounts. All of these threads tie back to the same theme: energy price spikes create both challenges and opportunities, and the disciplined investor is the one who rotates toward the opportunities with clear risk parameters. Before we review the simulated portfolio, let me give you the transparent, full-picture history. Across the last four simulated trades we are currently sitting at a cumulative loss of forty-four dollars and ninety-one cents on standardized one dollars,000 position sizes. That works out to an average return per trade of negative 1.12 percent. Our win rate sits at 25 percent—one win, two losses, and one breakeven. The best trade gained 4.44 percent; the worst lost 7.49 percent. We are on a one-trade losing streak. Our A I driven analysis is actively learning from the pattern that geopolitical risk has repeatedly suppressed the rebounds we expected. We are tightening the catalyst filter accordingly. This is exactly what the learning journey looks like. Every loss, when studied, becomes tuition that makes the next decision sharper. Yesterday’s simulated weekly hold in T S L A was a contrarian fade of overwhelmingly negative analyst sentiment following recent price weakness. We entered at three hundred sixty-five dollars and eighty-six cents on Monday’s open, betting on an eventual relief-driven rebound. The position was exited at three hundred sixty dollars and fifty-nine cents on Friday’s close, producing a 1.44 percent loss, or fourteen dollars and forty cents on the one dollars,000 notional. The broader geopolitical risk environment kept growth stocks under pressure and the expected relief bounce never materialized. The lesson is clear: a pure contrarian setup is not enough on its own. Going forward we will require both negative sentiment and a positive technical reversal signal before entering similar mean-reversion trades. That adjustment should meaningfully improve the edge on the next setup. Before we wrap up, here’s what I’ll be watching tomorrow: how gold volatility and energy input costs evolve if the Gulf ceasefire holds or frays further. That single variable will likely set the tone for next week’s rotational flows. That’s your Modern Investing Techniques for April ninth, 2026. Every episode is built to make you a sharper, more disciplined investor. If you’re finding value, please subscribe, leave a review on your favorite platform, and tell one friend who’s tired of settling for index-fund returns. We’ll be back tomorrow with fresh market intelligence, another Strategy Spotlight, and a new Practice Investment. Until then, stay disciplined, manage your risk, and remember—modern tools have democratized strategies that used to belong only to hedge funds. Use them wisely. Financial Disclaimer (read slowly and clearly): This podcast is for EDUCATIONAL and ENTERTAINMENT purposes only. Nothing discussed constitutes financial advice, investment recommendations, or solicitations to buy or sell securities. The “Practice Investment of the Day” uses SIMULATED trades with NO real money—it is a learning exercise to demonstrate analytical techniques. Past performance does not predict future results. Markets involve risk of loss. Always do your own research and consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions. The host and Nerra Network have no fiduciary relationship with listeners. *(End of episode – two thousand four hundred seventy-eight words ≈ 15 min 40 sec at natural conversational pace)* This podcast is curated by Patrick but generated using AI voice synthesis of my voice using ElevenLabs. The primary reason to do this is I unfortunately don't have the time to be consistent with generating all the content and wanted to focus on creating consistent and regular episodes for all the themes that I enjoy and I hope others do as well.