Here are five things you need to know this morning

Goodbye to Canada, Shopify might be hinting? I’ll be keeping an eye on Shopify this morning, as the Canadian e-commerce giant made some eyebrow-raising changes to U.S. regulatory paperwork that implies a big change could be coming. Bloomberg reported on Thursday that Shopify filed a 10-K annual report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month. Since the company is dual listed in Toronto and New York, filing paperwork with the SEC is no surprise, but the company filed the domestic issuer 10-K instead of the 40-F form that foreign companies report. That’s fuelling speculation that Shopify could be mulling a change of its headquarters, or where it is domiciled, which is a contentious topic in Canada right now (Just ask Brookfield and TFI). In the filing, the company named both its Lafayette Street hub in New York and its O’Connor Street site in Ottawa as “principal executive offices.” Analysts at TD Securities Inc. noticed the change earlier this month, and also noted that the filing contains a U.S. employer identification number, which is a “key consideration” for companies seeking to be included in U.S. index providers like FTSE Russell. Shopify also reordered how it reports segmented assets “which flips the geographic breakdown” from majority Canadian to majority U.S., TD Cowen analyst Peter Haynes said in the note. This may well turn out to be nothing, but until we get clarity this will be a fascinating one to watch.

BNN has you covered on red-hot Canadian GDP: Statistics Canada this morning reported that Canada’s economy grew much faster than expected at the end of 2024, with GDP expanding at an annualized pace of 2.6 per cent. That’s much better than the 1.7 per cent that economists had been expecting to see, and even better than the upwardly revised pace of 2.2 clocked in the previous quarter. Exports were a particular source of strength, growing by 7.4 per cent in the quarter, likely boosted by a rush to ship to the U.S. while Donald Trump’s tariff talk was just heating up. Preliminary numbers suggest the strength carried into the first quarter, with January GDP growing by 0.3 per cent, up from December’s 0.2 per cent pace. We’ll have plenty of reaction to the strong GDP numbers and what they mean for markets, including interviews with Pierre Cléroux with BDC on The Street, Dawn Desjardins with Deloitte during The Open, Jimmy Jean from Desjardins during The Close, and more to come.

Thanks, but no thanks? As buyout talks fizzle, 7-Eleven needs a plan: We continue to watch with great interest what’s happening over at Seven & i Holdings, where the Japanese owner of the 7-Eleven convenience store chain is under pressure to come up with a plan after its preferred option, a management buyout, fell apart due to financing concerns. Canada’s Alimentation Couche-Tard has offered to buy the company for 7-Eleven but has gotten a frosty reception at every turn. But that was when Seven & i had a plethora of options. Now, the stock is selling off, as investors are no longer willing to accept the status quo. S&P Global Ratings warns the chain’s creditworthiness is under pressure from the uncertainty. Japanese news agency Nikkei reports this morning that Couche-Tard is thinking about setting up an office in the country so it can gather information to better prepare its formal bid. Couche-Tard still faces an uphill climb, including many regulatory hurdles in the U.S. and Japan – never mind financing problems of its own – but the odds of something happening here are getting better by the day.

For credit unions too, size matters: There’s an interesting deal to keep an eye on in British Columbia, where Vancity, the biggest credit union in Canada outside of Quebec, is in merger talks to buy B.C.-based First Credit Union. Vancity has 545,000 members and 51 locations across the province, managing more than $35 billion in assets. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the big banks, but they cater to a clientele that are looking for an alternative. First Credit has 14,500 members and about $667 million in assets. It will be interesting to watch what happens here as the “go big or go home” philosophy that many banks have is also apparently an impulse in the credit union world.

Everything that glitters: After a record-setting run, gold is poised for its first weekly loss of 2025 as investors book profits on the precious metal that has been knocking on the door of US$3,000 without walking through it. Gold is changing hands at about $2,860 an ounce this morning, down for the second day in a row. The catalyst for the sell-off appears to be Donald Trump: the volatility his policies have created typically send investors flocking for safe havens like gold. But his pronouncement this week that long threatened tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico are set to finally come next week has fuelled a rally in the U.S. dollar, and since gold is priced in U.S. dollars, bullion is paying the price.