IPO Momentum, Small Caps & Sector Rotation | The Market this Month (June 2026)

🎉 Episode 6 of  The Market this Month is live - and we're seeing growing signs that capital markets are reopening as investors position for opportunities in the second half of 2026.

Powered by the Canadian Securities Exchange in partnership with Stockhouse, host Anna Serin is joined by Bruce Campbell of StoneCastle Investment Management to break down the latest trends shaping junior and small-cap markets.

💡 Spotlight topic: IPO momentum returns as capital markets reopen

A surge in IPO activity across Canada and the U.S., alongside continued financing strength, is signalling renewed investor confidence. As capital flows back into growth sectors, investors are watching for opportunities across technology, resources, and emerging small-cap companies.

📊 Also in this episode:
• IPO resurgence: Major new listings reflecting stronger risk appetite
• Technology markets: New growth companies returning to public markets
• Resource sector strength: Financing momentum continuing beyond PDAC
• Inflation & rates: Driving shifts across commodities and sectors
• Small caps: Earnings growth supporting continued outperformance
• Market outlook: Sector rotation opportunities emerging into summer

💬 “The risk appetite and interest in new companies has really evolved here.” — Bruce Campbell

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#CapitalMarkets #SmallCaps #MarketUpdate #IPO #Technology #ResourceStocks #Investing #PublicMarkets #CSE

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

The Canadian Securities Exchange presents your go-to source for trends in junior and small cap markets. Each month, join host Anna Sarin, and financial expert Bruce Campbell, in partnership with Stockers.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

Welcome to the June 2026 edition of the Market This Month. I'm Anna Sarin, Director of Listings Development with the Canadian Securities Exchange, and today we're taking a closer look at what's been driving markets over the past few weeks, particularly through the lens of Canadian public companies and the junior capital markets. As we move into June, investors continue to navigate a fascinating mix of improving sentiment, persisting economic uncertainty, and renewed appetite for capital formation. While volatility remains a defining feature of the market environment, investors are increasingly looking ahead to opportunities that may emerge in the second half of 2026. This past month, markets reacted to several significant developments. Geopolitical tensions eased following progress towards ceasefire agreements in key regions, helping to stabilize investor sentiment. Earnings season delivered a mixed but generally constructive picture, with many companies demonstrating resilience despite ongoing concerns around inflation and interest rates. At the same time, spikes in the VIX reminded investors that uncertainty remains very much a part of today's investment landscape. Despite these challenges, capital continues to flow into the market. Here at the CSC, we were pleased to welcome several new issuers to the exchange, including Yocal.ai, bringing innovative AI-powered business solutions to the public markets, as well as three resource-focused companies, Pure Core Metals, Flow Capital Corp., and Atlantico Energy Corp. The financing market also remained active, demonstrating that investors continue to support compelling growth stories and quality management teams. Recent financings included LaFleur Minerals $11 million bot deal financing, Cresco Labs securing U.S. $50 million Revolving Credit Facility, Apex Critical Metals closing a $15 million life financing, Max Power completing a $25 million strategic investment from Eric Sprott, and Formation Metals closing an upsize $22.4 million private placement to accelerate its exploration program. Taken together, these transactions suggest that while investors remain selective, the financing window remains open for companies with strong assets, clear catalysts, and disciplined execution. So what does all of this mean for investors today? We'll discuss whether the recent resurgence in IBO activity signals a broader reopening of the capital markets. While recent volatility may tell us about the longer-term outlook and which sectors appear best positioned as inflation, interest rates, and economic growth continue to shape investment decisions. We'll also take a closer look at the current outlook for precious metals, base metals, energy, and technology, along with the seasonal trends investors should be watching as we head into the summer months. To help us break it all down, I'm joined once again by my co-host, Bruce Campbell, Portfolio Manager with Stonecastle Investment Management. All right, Bruce. Well, listen, thank you for joining us for our June 2026 episode of The Market This Month. Unfortunately, we are virtual today and not in person, but I think we're going to have you out in Vancouver next month. So I look forward to seeing you again next month in person. Um, let's dive right into it. Um what we've seen over the past month uh in May and early part of June was a large number um of IPOs, both in Canada and the US. What does this tell us about what's going on in the markets and uh maybe investor sentiment?

SPEAKER_01 4:01

Well, we certainly have seen a lot of IPOs, both ones that have been listed and ones that are in the works for listing. The uh the we're recording this just before the SpaceX IPO is uh going to be coming public, and that's gonna have a lot of attention because it's the biggest IPO that we've ever seen in history. And then we also have uh Anthropic and Open AI as well in the works. And then even in Canada here, Canada's joined uh joined the IPO train in that uh we saw Apatex, which is the healthcare company, um, they went public as well. So we've seen a lot of really big IPOs. And I guess this really comes back to what we've a trend we've been talking about now for probably close to a year, which was this trend of seeing more um fundraising and more uh financings happening on all levels. It started really small going back probably about 18 months ago now, where we just saw, you know, some of these life offerings happening, and they were kind of the $10 million range, and then they started getting upsized and they got bigger and bigger, and then we saw some other financings, and and now we're seeing these monster financings. So the risk appetite and the interest in new companies has really evolved here.

SPEAKER_02 5:20

I mean, uh it's so exciting. These really big names that we see come to market. I think there's they're such a good branding, maybe for investing in the markets in general. I feel like the SpaceX is on even non-investors' minds. So it's always great when we see these big ones. You know, the CSC has never gotten off the IPO train. We've we've, you know, in good markets and bad, we consistently see companies come to us, some smaller than others. You know, sometimes we see more in the resource sector. But, you know, one thing that we're seeing at the CSC, which um is really exciting to me for the first time I've seen in quite a long time, is this IPO within the tech sector. Wouldn't you say this is a bit of an anomaly to see this much tech coming to market?

SPEAKER_01 6:05

Yeah, certainly in the last probably, I would almost say decade in Canada. Prior to that, you did see, you did see smaller new emerging companies that you know were under that billion dollars that were coming public in Canada, but it really hasn't, we haven't seen that in in probably close to 10 years now. It's really been dominated by other sectors. So it is great to see because we saw the Canadian market really get hollowed out. A lot of those companies that you know maybe started as a 25 or 50 or 100 million dollar company started to grow, and then they were getting taken out in that 500 to a billion dollar range after they'd been operating and profitable. That happened over, you know, probably the last uh, you know, going back 10 years to probably going back five years, we saw a lot of that hollowing out, and now this is nice because we're seeing new technologies emerge. Canada has been a you know fairly decent hub for technology for sure. And now we're getting that um those new companies coming to market and it creates amazing opportunities for investors who want to dig around and find out what's happening.

SPEAKER_02 7:13

Yeah, I mean, you know, the exciting part from my perspective, and and you know, kind of watching companies come to market on the CSC is typically we'll see the more startup and growth companies that come to our market at the CSC. The exciting part of that is that they get an opportunity to grow, access that public capital by being a public vehicle, um, and have the ability to grow kind of as an investor, you get to be part of that upside opportunity. You know, SpaceX is a little bit more of a uh liquidity exercise, wouldn't you say? So, you know, it's it's this opportunity when we see these growth companies coming to market for investors to get to participate in it and for these companies to be able to access the public markets, as opposed to the maybe the more traditional um, you know, uh uh venture market or private equity market um that the uh tech companies would typically um you know go down that road for.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Yeah, I mean that's the beauty of what we're seeing right now is that you know, you think about the SpaceXs or the Anthropics or the Open AI, those are these monster private equity companies that have been funded privately. And it hasn't really allowed most investors the opportunity to get involved. Whereas if we're seeing um companies coming public on a on an exchange like the CSE and they're you know in that smaller intermediate size company size-wise or snack bracket, that allows investors of of all varieties to get access to it because they can invest in those shares publicly. Whereas the private equity is really for the let's let's be honest, like really for that kind of elite group of of people who have access to it. So it's it's really great from an investor standpoint because it just gives you more access to to uh to and to different investment ideas and uh different different sectors as well.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

Absolutely. Um, you know, I I want to just kind of ask you one more question on this before we move along, is you talk about some of the IPOs that are coming out of the states. One thing I noticed when we were taking a look at some of the financings on the CSC specifically, over the past six months, I'd say there's some really big uh financings that are happening to our issuers from across the border. So we're certainly not seeing a loss of sentiment from US investors coming up to Canada. Is that something you're seeing as well?

SPEAKER_01 9:35

It sure is, yeah. We, you know, if you go back again 24 months ago, we were just kind of this island all left by our own on our own. And if we were doing any financings, it was really, you know, Canadian-centric. And now we are seeing that where a lot of companies that are doing financings, they're doing them, you know, publicly, and you're seeing access um from US investors. But they're also you're seeing, you know, a number of private placements that are happening where the investors are US investors into a public company in Canada, but they're doing it on a private basis as US investors, which is great to see as well.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

I love this. I love this. Okay. Now, on the note of all of this amazing stuff coming to market, it doesn't mean that we're not experiencing some notable spike in volatility. Um, so when you look at these types of events, historically, what should investors be paying attention to as the market moves forward? What does this volatility tell you?

SPEAKER_01 10:30

I mean, we we haven't really seen something like this happen before. And so as a result, and when I say that, I'm talking about the size of the IPOs. So for instance, SpaceX is good, SpaceX is going to be the biggest in history to date. There, you know, potentially could be a bigger one down the road, but you know, maybe we have to wait for that. But when you see that happen, there's been a bunch of volatility created, specifically in the technology sector, around that, because now you have investors who are trying to fund their investment into SpaceX. So when they announce that they're going public and then they start pricing it and they start putting out allocations, well, then at that point in time, investors need to take capital and put it into SpaceX. And maybe they have the capital sitting aside in in cash, but a lot of times they don't. So it means they have to liquidate something else to move into SpaceX. And with the massive size that they're that they're doing and and the raise, it really um it really creates more volatility because you have people who are trading out of different stocks to raise and that money to go into these different IPOs. Historically, when we've seen this type of volatility, like again, we're recording this just before the SpaceX is um is going public, and we've seen a few days where the volatility index has had this these massive spikes up where they're you know 20, 30 percent higher on a day. And that historically, you know, has been um a long-term positive for markets. You don't tend to see that volatility spike up and stay up. It tends to spike up, it stays there for a little while, and then when it subsides, that's when the markets really start to move. So if you look at the shorter term, anywhere, you know, from one week to probably two months, it's it's always kind of you know, just pure guessing to know where the market's gonna go because you know so many factors come into play. But if you look at the longer term, sort of six months, year out from those volatility spikes, they tend to be really good for returns.

SPEAKER_02 12:36

Okay, okay, good to know. Um, I I don't know if you know this number, but how much is SpaceX raising as part of their IPO?

SPEAKER_01 12:43

It's not a lot of total dollars, like in relation to their IPO size. So they're they're um they're they're um gonna value it at 1.8 trillion and they're raising, and I know when I say this number, it's gonna sound ridiculous that I just said it wasn't a big number, but they're raising, I think, around 75 billion is what they targeted, but it's oversubscribed, so they probably take more than that, would be my guess. So I mean that's pretty big. And then if you look at some of the other things that have happened, you know, Google's announced that they're gonna raise around 80 billion. We have anthropic and open AI, which probably come in around the same range, maybe more. You're looking at half a trillion dollars probably with those four companies alone. Uh, we talk about these trillion dollar companies, but still, you know, $500 billion is a lot of money. And, you know, so that's um, you know, that has an impact on the markets for sure.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

Absolutely. And I think just to remind our audience, you know, a lot of that money, especially these types of IPOs, they're gonna be a little bit more um later stage investors. They're gonna be funds that are are a bit more um traditional and senior. And so when they're removing, when they're wanting to invest in the tech sector, they're gonna be rebalancing the portfolio. So they're probably gonna sell from the tech sector to buy in the tech sector. So as you were explaining before, that's where perhaps a lot of this volatility is coming from because they're not just going to necessarily take their cash allotment or something from the resource or energy. They're probably going to be moving funds around within the asset allocation that they currently have specifically for tech, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:23

Yeah, especially given the performance that we've seen in the tech sector. You know, it has really been performing for the last three years. So most investors probably have gains embedded in there. They also probably have uh, you know, a fairly good exposure to that sector as the performance has been strong. And if they held their position or even trimmed their position, it's growing in size. So they, you know, typically are harvesting from that area so that they don't get overexposed to the technology sector.

SPEAKER_02 14:51

Awesome. Well, um, all of this is very exciting to me, and I do love to see it. Do you think that there's um, you know, not that you'd have data on this, but do you think there's also an added interest in the space just because maybe the the next generation of investor understands the tech sector a little bit differently and they're a bit more engaged with it? I mean, we I feel like we're always struggling to engage a younger audience to the mining and resource sector, but do you think there's a more natural fit and interest from an investor that's perhaps younger to the tech side?

SPEAKER_01 15:26

I would agree 100% that that's the case. You know, if you look at our kids or um anyone that, you know, is sort of under the age of probably 80 years old, they adopt tech way more than someone who over was over that age and they understand it. Maybe not every single piece of it, but they use it extensively in their life. It's not that we don't use commodities in our life, but we probably just second nature it in that you know, we don't think about you know what what's involved with the raw materials that were needed for the production of um certain products that we use. But technology, we see it, plus it evolves and it has, you know, as it evolves, it catches people's interest. So you think back to this whole AI five years ago, most of us really kind of weren't too aware of what impact AI would eventually have. We, of course, saw the science fiction movies that that talked about it, but we didn't know what it would do for us in our life. And now, as those technologies come on board, if you're again a younger, you know, generation investor, you adopt those technologies quickly and you understand them. And then that you know piques your interest to invest where you like to go. It's the Peter Lynch analogy, right? Like invest in what you know.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, um, moving along, um, we haven't talked as I think we always touched on this a bit, but we haven't talked as much about it um in a while. There was a period of time, it's all we talked about, but uh let's let's break down what we're seeing in inflation and interest rates um and and earnings. So let's just talk about what you're seeing there and and how that's affecting the market.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Yeah, so just over the last um you know, four or five months, we've seen a move back up in inflation. And uh part of that's clearly been caused by what's happened with oil prices due to the conflict in in um in the Middle East, and that's you know driven driven inflation higher. As that inflation's been driven higher, we've seen interest rates moving higher as well. Higher interest rates have historically been harder on commodities than not. I mean, there's certainly commodities that that uh track inflation, but as a result, we have seen just over the last three months here now, we've seen a little bit more pressure on gold and silver, something that if we go back a year ago or even to February probably wasn't something that we were talking about at all. And then we've also seen some acceleration in um the price of copper and some of the other base metals as that inflation has happened and there's you know continual rollout in tech, those products are those commodities are needed, and we've seen inflation pushing up the price to actually produce those commodities. So we've seen that uh happen. So we've a bit of a a seesaw here with uh with what we've seen from commodity prices. So some of the ones that were leading have you know taken a back seat, and some of the ones that were lagging are now in the driver's seat.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

I mean, to me, it seems nice to to see things uh you know funneling through and everyone getting a moment to to shine, you know, where um uh I mean I just I'm amazed at what we've seen in the resource sector on the on the um uh uh CSC side of things. We've been seeing this kind of momentum for some time. And you kind of come up to PDAC as part of the year and you kind of expect that momentum. Um you see a lot of capital raising. We saw some really good oversubscribed um financings that were done within the resource sector, but it seems to keep going, um, which is nice to see. And is that something that you expect?

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yeah, I mean, we have to bring it all back into perspective, right? You know, when I talk about gold being down, you know, topped out at $5,500 an ounce, and it's you know, kind of in that low 4,000s now, but where was it a few years ago? You know, it was in the two, it had a two at the very front. So projects that were nowhere near being economic before now are, and with the capital markets open, it really provides a stimulus for projects to be done and uh and a lot more economics in uh in some of the projects that have sort of higher commodity prices as far as pulling them out of the ground.

SPEAKER_02 19:49

I was speaking to an issuer actually just last week, and they were talking about their project, which um, you know, the last time it was uh the last time it was in operations um is when gold prices were at 400. So the the economics of that project, you know, they made sense and then they stopped when when they when the price of gold was at 400, the economics just weren't there for them to keep moving forward. So now I think there's a lot of projects out there where people are starting to pay attention to them again, going, well, at $4,000, the economics um are certainly there. So there's some opportunity of maybe some projects that were sleeping for a little while that uh are coming back to life.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Yeah, and I mean that's what I see. When you go through slide decks or presentations from companies, a lot of them have their resource estimates based on a lot lower um commodity prices. And I'm not saying that that's not built into the stock price, the higher commodity prices, but you know, when you look at just the pure economics of what they thought was feasible to go through the capital raise project and build, you know, production facilities, it was at a lot lower prices. And now that those numbers are higher, it just means stronger economics and then stronger cash flow for the investors once they get to the place of production.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Yeah, I mean, look, there's also um pulling that gold out is a lot more expensive than it used to be as well. But uh there certainly is seems to be some opportunity there. Um on that note, um, I wanted to ask you about some small, you've kind of noticed some shift in small cap stocks, uh, that they've had some encouraging performances. Um, and as we move into the second after half of the year, where do you see the greatest opportunities emerging within the small cap space?

SPEAKER_01 21:35

We continue to see really strong earnings across the board in small cap. And again, going back to just a little bit under a year ago now, we started to see that trend emerging. So coming through the second quarter of 2025 was when we started to see earnings numbers increasing on mass in smaller companies. We had seen it in the large companies before that, and now, and then we started to see it in the smaller companies. And the market and investors really started to take note of that going into the fourth quarter of 2025, and that's when you know, if you turned you tuned into the media, they were talking about oh, these small caps are really moving, the small cap performance, and that didn't shouldn't really come as a surprise, and it didn't surprise us because we'd saw those earnings trends coming through the first quarter. We continue to see those earnings trends, and then even with all of the crosswinds of everything that's happening globally, economically, we continue to see those numbers strong. So it wouldn't be a shocker that as long as the economy continues to stay together, that we continue to see a pickup in those earnings, and then that's going to drive share prices, and then you know, even a big small cap investors are always looking for rotation, so they're rotating out of that big small cap into a medium-sized small cap or a smaller small cap.

SPEAKER_02 23:03

Yeah, and I think too when the markets um when we're experiencing this type of movement in the markets, investors get to be a little pickier. So uh good fundamentals become more and more important when you say.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Oh yeah, a hundred percent. Uh, you know, there's always as you as the cycle gets extended, the fundamentals become more important because to start with, off the bottom, people are just looking at kind of the blue sky opportunity. And then as the stock price catches up to that blue sky opportunity, then the fundamentals become, you know, more critical to see really who's gonna outperform and who's gonna just you know match what's happening with the market.

SPEAKER_02 23:42

Absolutely. Okay, Bruce, on that note, um, before I get to see you in person next month, what what can we think about going into the next month of investing? You know, we're approaching summer, um, which tends to be a little bit of a slower period, although I think some years have proven us wrong. But uh, what are your thoughts going into the rest of June and early July?

SPEAKER_01 24:01

I mean, one of the areas that we're really watching in the next few months is what kind of rotation we could possibly see. And that might actually be led by some of the things that we've talked about, both on the IPO side, but also on the commodity side and on the earnings side. And so it's there there really is potential, and we can we can kind of see where there's an opportunity for there to be significant sector rotation here that might start sometime this summer. Doesn't mean it's going to happen, but you always want to be cognizant of what's changing and where the earnings trend's coming from.

SPEAKER_02 24:38

Absolutely. And that's why we get professional guidance so that we can have experts like you help us watch out for those. Um, Bruce, it's always a pleasure to chat with you, and I really do look forward to seeing you in person next month. Um uh, you know, until then, I hope you have a wonderful start to the summer, and uh, we'll chat soon.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

Yeah, have a great uh have a great start to your summer as well.

SPEAKER_02 25:01

Thank you.