The Mid December 2025 Shopping List

 

It's a busy time of year, being mid December with many having travel plans to visit family or friends along with last minute shopping ideas. Preparing for Christmas meals while looking for deals as groceries continue to go up, especially meats and poultry. Turkeys are actually the least expensive these days, depending on the store.

An interesting read with Bob's recent article on his Tawcan blog about 5 Canadian stocks he is deciding on buying in early January with his TFSA account.  Of the 5, I own 2 and agree on Canadian Natural Resources, CNQ.TO and Manulife Financial, MFC.TO. Both stocks I own and buy on a regular basis. 

Canadian National Railway, CNR.TO is a stock I expect to gain in the future while currently dealing with Canada/USA trade tariffs but with track in the USA, the company moves a lot of freight, as well as at home.

On my end and with ex-dividend dates at the end of December, TC Energy, TRP.TO and the pipeline South Bow Corp, SOBO.TO are both on my radar. 

Capital Power. CPX.TO is making news recently, adding assets and renovating them in the US and a contract to power a data centre in Canada with details to come out at later date. 

Power Corporation of Canada, POW.TO is also on my further buy list. With POW, I think of Wealthsimple, Great-West Life and IGM Financial being under their wing as a holding company.

The top 6 banks in Canada increased their dividends last month except for the Bank of Nova Scotia, which may come in 2026 but I like the 35% gain since June of this year. BNS.TO has an ex-dividend date of January 6th, 2026 with a current 4.38% yield. 

Interesting and surprising for a covered call ETF I own for the income, ZWB, BMO Covered Call Canadian Banks hit a record high at over $25 a unit currently and increased it's distribution by 10% for the November's payment with a market cap of 3.8 billion. I'm always aware that a market pullback will probably effect ZWB's price more being a covered call than it's bank holdings but as a risk reliever, one can always sell now for the total gain if bought in 2024 for example or early April of this year.

I'm looking forward to 2026 and another interesting year with the stocks along with the ups and downs of the market place.

Have a safe Merry Christmas and wishing good health. 

 

Big Banks in December, 2025

 

The first week in December brings the much anticipated big bank earnings on my end with the Bank of Nova Scotia/Scotiabank reporting first, being the 2nd of December as I write this. 

With an impressive gain of 31% in the last 6 months, BNS.TO posted a good quarterly report and beat estimates earning $1.93 per share today after making some changes for the better.

Scotiabank is the first major bank to release earnings for the three months ended Oct. 31. Royal Bank of Canada RY-T and National Bank of Canada NA-T will report results on Wednesday. Toronto-Dominion Bank TD-T, Bank of Montreal BMO-T, and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce CM-T will wrap up earnings week on Thursday.

The first site I normally go to when I want to see how a stock or ETF is performing and what the dividend growth (if any) is currently at, is the updated version of Dividend History which is a free, no subscription required dividend information tool I use with it's newly added price and dividend charts I find informative.

Dividend History provides me with a quick overview before moving on to do further research to check up on or add a stock to the portfolio. Ex-dividend and Payment dates are displayed for handy viewing.

TD Bank, TD.TO is the next bank to report on the 4th of December which I'm interested in after Scotiabank. TD has been levelling off over the last month at around $117 CAD after the bank gained over 50% for the year to date. Both banks have ex-dividend dates in January, 2026. 

Financials including insurance companies are core holdings in the portfolio such as Manulife and Great-West Life with plans to add more.

With their yearly dividend increase and a yield just shy of 5%, I'll be looking to add to Canadian Natural Resources, CNQ.TO before the 12th of December with some key points:

• Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNQ) has a strong track record of increasing dividends for 25 consecutive years, currently offering a yield of 4.99%.
• The company's diversified portfolio in oil and natural gas, along with majority ownership of its assets, enhances its operational flexibility and capital allocation.
• CNQ's robust balance sheet allows for strategic acquisitions, exemplified by the US$6.5 billion purchase of Chevron's Canadian assets, which can drive revenue growth.

The second half of December will be busy with Christmas approaching and 5 stocks on my radar with 4 in the portfolio. Energy, pipeline, conglomerate and power sectors with month ending ex-dividend dates plus a new addition from my watch list, Rogers Sugar, RSI. I consume the sugar daily along with my Tim Horton's coffee addiction. Sugar is certainly tough to cut back on at times. They say one should understand the fundamentals of a company and what it provides before buying and I've been doing that first hand and on their company site.

Where I'm invested with 3 different brokers, I've tried a few different share and dividend tracker sites and compared plans plus what's available as a free member. I like free but that usually comes with limited features

I settled on Snowball Analytics with reasonable subscription costs and more cool features than I was expecting after looking over their site for awhile. A visual snapshot as I added my holdings and transactions. Just my opinion and experience being satisfied with Snowball.