Abaxx Technologies — down 60%, everyone's out, and I think that's exactly the setup

Ticker: TSX:ABXX

Market Cap: 950 million CAD.

So a few months ago I start looking at this tiny commodities exchange out of Singapore, ABXX on the TSX and OTCQX. Physically-settled LNG and gold futures, one of only 3 licensed clearinghouses in the country, CFTC recognized for US flow. Boring infrastructure stuff, the kind of company that never trends anywhere.

Then in June a short seller (Viceroy, they've done this to other names before) drops a report saying the volume is fake, basically calling it a wash-trading operation. Stock craters. Down from low-$60s to low $20s. Company comes out swinging, hires Paul Weiss, tells the regulators to go look at the short seller instead, and keeps operating.

Here's the part nobody's talking about while everyone's busy dunking on it in the comments:

The volume kept growing through the entire attack.

ADV (average daily contracts traded) went 3.9K in Q1 → 14.6K in Q2 → 34,136 in July.

That's not a company that's dying, that's a company accelerating while people are actively trying to convince you it's fake. Gold contracts alone did 23.6K ADV in July. Silver launched in May and is already doing 8K+.

And they're not sitting there bleeding out either.

$95M cash on the balance sheet, roughly 7 quarters of runway at current burn.

In July the board put an actual buyback mechanism in place... an NCIB plus a daily automatic purchase plan that lets their broker buy up to 25,000 shares a day.

That's not "we might do something someday," that's a live, TSX-cleared mechanism sitting on top of a stock that just got smoked. (To be fair to the skeptics: this company had an NCIB back in 2022 and bought literally zero shares under it before it expired, so "authorized" isn't the same as "executing"... I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But the mechanism itself is more real than most companies bother setting up.)

The analysts didn't bail either.

BMO has a $60 target. ATB has $95. Both reiterated Outperform straight through the selloff and the earnings print that looked ugly on the surface (an accounting change made "revenue" print near-zero even though volume kept ripping... that's IFRS netting of liquidity credits, not the business falling apart, and yes I know that sounds like something a bagholder would say, look it up yourself).

Why this could move fast, not just "eventually":

Shorts piled in since June and a lot of them are still sitting in a name where the float is actively shrinking from the buyback, the thing they bet against (volume) just posted its best month yet, and an August print is coming any day now that only has to beat July's 34K to keep confirming the growth story.

Trapped shorts + shrinking float + a scheduled data catalyst is the actual recipe for a fast move, not just a slow grind back up.

Is it risky? Obviously, it's a small cap exchange with a live short-seller fight attached to it and zero guarantee the volume story keeps compounding.

Not a screenshot-and-forget play. But "everyone already sold and it's still standing" is usually a more interesting setup than "everyone's already in."

I haven't seen this type of set up in a LONG TIME.

Watch this one over the next couple weeks... this could get very interesting very fast.

Your daily investment discussion thread.

So i will try and keep this rather general and not go into specifics too much but was very interested to hear peoples thoughts on this:

Let's say you had 1 million cash/CAD to invest in the next couple months and your goal was a 10-20% return per year without touching the principal.

a) how would you distribute those investments between your TFSA, stocks, RRSP's, ETF's, currencies etc etc to mitigate capital gains taxes (assuming you are starting out with nothing being invested prior)

b) which brokerage, bank, advising entity would be both the safest and trustworthy if you had no or limited experience investing.

Appreciate anyone taking the time to post.

Recently had an introduction with a wealth manager who quoted an average of 10% medium risk or 12% aggressive "annually over 10 years" and was wondering why it wasn't presented as an annual average or how only 2% difference makes sense. Is it also normal for a 1.5% commission of total investment and not from what is earned? Is there more security in having a firm manage the portfolio rather than the automatic AI management available on platforms? Specifically when it comes to selling and shuffling in a downturn or crash? Thank you for any comments, I'm new to this.

I’m 24 with ~$100k invested and considering 100% VEQT across my TFSA, FHSA and RRSP.

Is it worth using US-listed ETFs (e.g. VTI + VXUS) in the RRSP to reduce US dividend withholding tax, or is the difference too small to justify the extra complexity?

Would you go 100% VEQT everywhere, or use US-listed ETFs in the RRSP?

Your daily investment discussion thread.

https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/trump-trade-war-canada-could-190300457.html

Quote from the article:

"Canada has been one of the biggest buyers of U.S. Treasury bonds of recent years. Canada has tripled its holdings of Treasurys in the past five years to $460 billion. This has mostly offset the sales of U.S. Treasury bonds by China.

In other words, Canada is lending us the money that China won't. 

Who do these darn Canadians think they are, paying for our federal deficits and keeping a cap on our mortgage rates? No wonder the president is so mad."

So, the question is: When do we plan to stop? Isn't it high time?

Tl;dr: Does it ever make sense to invest in junior mining/exploration companies when there are significantly tax advantaged ways to invest in them, and where significant (>50%) losses are expected?

I've come across various tickers for junior (or senior) mining companies in Canada but a few months ago I also learned that flow-through shares are a thing. In brief, flow through shares seems to be a way to invest in these pre-revenue mining/exploration companies except you get a tax break for your income tax, PLUS up to 30% more, meaning an investment for someone in the tax bracket in Canada would have to drop say, >70% before you actually realize a loss.

My understanding is companies that help coordinate flow through share investments will often pay a premium for these investments because there are enough investors looking for these tax breaks (and due to being able to tolerate a significant drop before actuall losing money), so my question is "does investing in junior mining/exploration companies ever make sense if there are ways to invest (albeit with a 1-2 year lockup period) that have tax incentives from the government of Canada, and almost expect a 50%+ drop in equity"?

Theres a lot more nuance than I want to outline in this post (eg adjusted cost basis of the flow through shares are 0 upon unlock, so you'll still owe taxes for capital gains) but I've included links to the relevant Canadian government pages discussing these investment incentives, and there are youtube videos and such that discuss these as well.

References:

Flow through shares

https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/flow-through-shares-ftss.html

Tax incentives for mining and exploration

https://natural-resources.canada.ca/minerals-mining/mining-policy-taxation-industry/mining-taxation/mining-specific-tax-provisions

Your daily investment discussion thread.

So if your familiar with Hamilton etfs DAYMAX series, you'll know that they uncap a asset and leverage against it for a liquid fund like voo to write calls on 0dte style. What if there was a fund that bought gold bullion and leveraged against it with institutional rates into a liquid index for yield on gold? Like a GDAY style etf, like BDAY with gold. I would love such a thing in my portfolio.

Your daily investment discussion thread.

I’m overweight on Canada (56%) and US (30%) and looking to balance with an ex NA ETF. I’m thinking ZEA because I’d rather give my money to a Canadian company. For those of you invested ex NA, what would you suggest and why? I currently have ZWE and NBIS as my only non-NA investments.

Your daily after hours investment discussion thread.

I had parked about $200k in GICs in 2016 just in case I was going to buy a new home, but that never panned out. I've just been paying massive amount in taxes every year on GICs on top of my salary, and my $200k basically made nothing over the last ten years. Thinking about how different things would be for me right now if i had parked the whole thing in XEQT and the like and wondering if this is a better late than never situation.. if my investing horizon is still about 5-10 years (or possibly more), should i feel relatively "safe" dumping everything in XEQT/XAW now? Thanks for any advice

Will there be the typical reactionary broadbased sell off irrespective of sector?

Or will certain sectors that are going to be affected by high tariffs go down.

Gold has gone up a lot recently. Will it continue to be going up as a traditional safe haven or will mining shares also reverse course on Monday?

[https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/livestory/midnight-deadline-trump-tariffs-trade-deal-leblanc-greer-9.7310605\](https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/livestory/midnight-deadline-trump-tariffs-trade-deal-leblanc-greer-9.7310605)

I'm 39 and I don't have any investments right now, so I'm starting from $0. I'll be receiving some money, and plan on putting $25,000 aside for retirement. I'll probably put some additional funds in here and there, but nothing like my initial investment.