The Daily Chase: More evidence Canada's economy is slowing

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Here are five things you need to know this morning:

GDP eked out gains in September and October: New data from Statistics Canada this morning shows the country’s gross domestic product grew by 0.1 per cent in each of August, September and October. The September numbers mean growth for the quarter came in at one per cent annualized, which is below the Bank of Canada’s forecast of 1.5 per cent and less than the 2.1 per cent clocked in the summer. The numbers also mean that in real terms, GDP per capita has now declined for six quarters in a row. After the data came out, traders upped their bets on a 50-point rate cut by Canada’s central bank next month, increasing the likelihood of a super-sized move from one in four to one in three. A smaller 25-point cut is now fully baked in.

Trading in the green on Black Friday: It’s the day after Thanksgiving, a day that many Americans spend recovering on the couch, talking themselves into another helping of turkey leftovers, and potentially hitting the mall for some bargains. We’ll see if the same bargain hunting spirit is afoot on markets today, where trading in New York resumes and the TSX is set to face the day after closing at yet another all-time high of 25,543 yesterday. There’s very few earnings or macro events of note on the slate today, so in Canada the aforementioned sluggish GDP data may well set the tone.

Comp. Bureau targets Google for anti-competitive ad behaviour: Canada’s competition watchdog has set its sights on Google-owner Alphabet, suing the tech giant for allegedly abusing its dominance in web advertising unfairly. The bureau is asking the Competition Tribunal to punish and rein in the company’s power by forcing it to sell two of its ad tools and stop competitive practices. In terms of financial penalty, the bureau is hoping to compel the company to pay three times the value of the benefit it derived, or three per cent of its global gross revenue if that number can’t be “reasonably determined.” That latter figure was in excess of US$256 billion last year, so even a three-per-cent slice is theoretically a serious amount of coin. It’s the latest legal headache for the company in an increasingly tough regulatory environment for Big Tech around the world, with agencies including the U.S. FTC and the European equivalent trying to rein in the power and influence of Big Tech. The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking to force Alphabet to sell its web browser Chrome in another front on that growing pro-consumer war.

Liberal GST holiday bill passes house: The Liberal bill to give consumers a two-month “holiday” on a slew of consumer goods passed a key vote in parliament last night, bringing the measure one step closer to being law. The bill means the sales tax break will run from Dec. 14 until Feb. 14 and is projected to cost government coffers $1.6 billion. That doesn’t include the tally for a related plan to issue $250 rebate cheques to more than 19 million Canadian workers, which will be voted on as a separate bill. The Liberals’ increasingly reluctant partners, the NDP, are pushing for it to be expanded to include more people.

Does Elon Musk really need another plaything? An interesting story could be unfolding this morning after shares in toy maker Hasbro are up about four per cent premarket. There’s no news out of the company that would warrant the surge, so the next obvious candidate to explain it makes about as much sense as anything else: Elon Musk. The billionaire owner of X replied to one of his followers’ posts on the platform, inquiring as to what Hasbro was worth in a discussion about the fate of the fantasy roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons. That’s one of many toy and game assets owned by the US$8B company, also including My Little Pony, Monopoly and others. It’s seemingly fuelling speculation in some quarters that Musk might be idly musing about buying the company. Like most things on X, this one may fizzle out and end up being nothing, but when stocks start moving it’s often on the belief that where there is smoke, there’s fire. Or to translate that into 5e terms: “Where there’s a smouldering mephit carcass, there’s often faerie fire.” :)