Canadian Penny Stocks to Watch, Ranked on the Balance Sheet

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Last updated: September 2026. Prices as at the September 11, 2026 close.

Most guides to Canadian penny stocks are written as though the only question is which one goes up tenfold. That is the wrong question, and it is why so many of these lists age badly. The 2023 version of this page carried ten names. Two of them no longer trade at all. One was taken private for four cents a share. One has re-rated so far it is no longer a penny stock. A fifth trades a little over nine thousand dollars of stock a day, which means a serious position in it cannot be sold in a hurry at any price you would like.

So the question this page answers is narrower and more useful: among Canadian companies trading under $5, which ones can fund themselves long enough for the upside to matter, and which ones can you actually get in and out of?

That reframing does real work. It moves a producing gold miner with $111.1 million USD of cash into the top three and pushes a pre-revenue explorer to tenth, even though the explorer has the more exciting story. It puts a healthcare company with a $1.58 billion revenue guidance at number one, which is not what most people picture when they hear “penny stock”. And it names, out loud, the four holdings that came off the previous list and why.

Everything below is priced at the September 11, 2026 close. Every company figure comes from that company’s own filing, cited by document. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy any specific security, and the risks section is not boilerplate: on this part of the market it is the most important thing on the page.

How to Buy Canadian Penny Stocks in Canada

Before the list, the mechanics, because they matter more here than on any other kind of stock. Getting the execution wrong on a name that trades $200,000 a day will cost you more than picking the second-best company instead of the best one.

You need a brokerage account, and not every one of them will do

Canadian penny stocks trade on three venues: the Toronto Stock Exchange, the TSX Venture Exchange and the Canadian Securities Exchange. Any Canadian discount broker gives you the TSX. Most give you the TSX Venture. Access to the CSE is more variable, and a handful of brokers restrict orders in stocks below a certain price or require a phone call for them. If a specific name matters to you, check that your broker carries the exchange it trades on before you fund the account. Our guide to opening a brokerage account in Canada walks through the paperwork, the investing apps comparison sets out which platforms cover which venues, and if this is your first purchase of any stock, how to buy your first stock covers the order screen itself.

What it costs

Two costs, and on penny stocks the second is usually the larger.

The visible one is commission. On a $2,000 position, a $9.95 trade is roughly half a percent each way. That is survivable once and expensive if you trade often.

The invisible one is the spread. A stock quoted at $0.55 bid and $0.57 ask has a spread of two cents, which is 3.6% of the price. Buy at the ask and sell at the bid on the same day and you are down 3.6% before the company has done anything. On the ten names below, the spread ranges from negligible on the most liquid to wider than any commission on the thinnest. Always use a limit order. A market order in a thin stock is an instruction to pay whatever the other side is asking, and in a name trading $40,000 a day that can be several percent above the last print. If you trade frequently enough for the order screen itself to matter, our best trading apps in Canada page ranks the platforms on execution rather than on account opening.

If you do not have an account yet, open a Questrade® account and fund it in Canadian dollars before you go any further. Questrade reaches the TSX, the TSX Venture Exchange and the CSE, which covers every stock on this page, and its per-trade pricing works sensibly on the small position sizes this part of the market calls for. Wealthsimple is the simpler alternative if you want a no-commission platform and can live with a narrower venue list. Either way, get the account open and the money settled first, because the worst time to discover your broker will not carry a stock is the day you want to buy it.

Which account to hold them in

The account matters because the tax treatment of a loss differs sharply by account, and losses are a normal outcome here.

In a non-registered account, a loss is a capital loss. It offsets capital gains elsewhere, this year or carried back three years or forward indefinitely. That is a real consolation prize, and it is the only account where you get one.

In a TFSA, a loss is simply gone. Worse, the contribution room that the lost money occupied does not come back. Put $7,000 into a TFSA, lose it on a speculative name, and you have permanently destroyed $7,000 of lifetime tax-free room. The TFSA rules explainer covers how withdrawals and re-contributions actually work, and the contribution room calculator will tell you what you have available. The upside case is real too: a name that goes up five times inside a TFSA is tax-free forever. The point is that the account amplifies the outcome in both directions and gives you nothing back when it goes wrong.

In an RRSP, the same permanent-loss problem applies, with the added wrinkle that the room is tied to earned income and comes back far more slowly.

A common and sensible compromise is to hold speculative positions in a non-registered account, where the losses at least work for you, and reserve registered room for the compounding holdings covered on our RRSP stocks page. If you do realise a gain, the capital gains tax calculator will tell you what you owe.

The step through to a broker

If you do not already have an account that reaches the TSX Venture Exchange, that is the gate. Questrade carries the TSX, the TSX Venture and the CSE, and its per-trade pricing works out sensibly on the small position sizes this part of the market calls for. Our Questrade review goes through the fee schedule in detail, and the Questrade and Wealthsimple comparison is the better read if you are choosing between the two.

The order of operations

1. Open and fund the account, and confirm it reaches the venue you need. 2. Decide the position size before you look at the chart. See the position sizing section below; this is the single most important decision on the page. 3. Look up the average daily volume. If your intended position is more than about a tenth of a normal day’s trading, it is too big. 4. Place a limit order. Never a market order. 5. Write down why you bought it and what would make you sell. On a stock that can move 20% in a week, a decision made in advance is the only one you will trust.

What Counts as a Penny Stock in Canada

There is no legal definition in Canada, which is why every list you read uses a different one.

The American definition, from the Securities and Exchange Commission, is a stock trading below $5 USD, and it generally refers to over-the-counter securities rather than exchange-listed ones. Canada has no equivalent rule. What we have instead are exchange listing requirements, and those are what actually separate the market into tiers.

This page uses under $5 CAD, listed on the TSX, the TSX Venture Exchange or the CSE. That is the working definition most Canadian investors have in mind, and it is deliberately a price test rather than a market-capitalisation test, because the price is what determines how the stock behaves: the size of the spread as a percentage, the effect of a one-cent move, the mechanics of dilution.

It has an odd consequence worth stating plainly. A company with a $1 billion market capitalisation and a $4 share price is a penny stock under this definition, and a company with a $30 million market capitalisation and an $8 share price is not. Two of the ten names below carry market values above $1 billion. They are on the list because they satisfy the price test and because they are exactly the kind of company a reader searching this term is trying to find: cheap on a per-share basis, liquid enough to trade, and not a shell.

If you want the tighter version, the true sub-dollar market, the section on penny stocks under one dollar below deals with it separately.

Why Canadian Penny Stocks Are So Cheap

A share price is not a valuation. It is a valuation divided by the share count, and the share count is a decision the company made. Understanding why so many Canadian companies trade in cents comes down to three mechanisms, none of which is “the market has not noticed them yet”.

Mechanism one: they were financed in shares

A Canadian mineral explorer with no revenue has one source of capital, and it is issuing stock. A typical junior does a private placement every twelve to eighteen months, each one at a discount to market, each one usually with a half-warrant attached. Do that for a decade and the share count goes from 20 million to 300 million without the business having grown at all. The price per share falls mechanically, because the same pie is cut into more slices.

You can see this in the filings. Cardiol Therapeutics, one of the ten below, reported a weighted average of 114,935,371 shares outstanding in the second quarter of 2026 against 82,653,373 a year earlier. That is 39% more shares in twelve months, and it is disclosed on the face of the income statement in the company’s own interim financial statements. The company is not hiding it. Most readers simply never look.

Mechanism two: they are priced for a probability, not a forecast

A pre-revenue lithium developer is not worth the discounted value of its future cash flows, because there is a material chance there are none. It is worth the value of the deposit multiplied by the probability the project gets built, minus the cost of the dilution required to build it. When lithium prices fall, that probability falls, and the stock does not decline by the change in the commodity price. It declines by far more. Li-FT Power trades 71.8% below its 52-week high. Standard Lithium trades 60.1% below its. Neither company failed. The market simply repriced the odds.

Mechanism three: some of them are cheap because they should be

This is the uncomfortable one. Of the ten holdings on the 2023 version of this page, four are no longer investable at all: two delisted, one taken private at four cents, one down to a price where the entire company is worth less than a Toronto semi-detached. That is not a market inefficiency waiting to be corrected. It is the base rate. The section on what happened to the 2023 list sets out each case with the document that recorded it.

The practical conclusion is that “it is only 30 cents” is not a reason to buy anything, and a low price carries no information about value on its own. What moves a stock price is the same set of forces at 30 cents as at $300. The difference is that at 30 cents, the dilution term dominates everything else.

How These Ten Were Ranked

One criterion, applied in order:

Can the business fund itself? A company generating free cash flow does not need to ask the market for money, so it does not dilute you while you wait. A company with several years of cash in the bank has time. A company with neither has a deadline. This is the first sort and it accounts for most of the ordering.

Can you trade it? Average dollar volume over the last 90 days. A name trading $16 million a day and a name trading $40,000 a day are different instruments even if the businesses are equally good. Thin liquidity is not a minor inconvenience; it is the reason a position that looks like a 40% loss on screen becomes a 55% loss when you try to sell it.

Is there a catalyst you can date? A final investment decision, a trial readout, a guidance update, a quarter that has already been pre-announced. Not a story, an event with a calendar entry.

What does the balance sheet say after the good news? Cash, debt, and how many shares there were a year ago.

Price momentum is deliberately not one of the four. The section on the crossover record explains why, with the arithmetic.

Every figure below is from the company’s own filing, and the document is named. Where a number comes from a market data source rather than a filing, it says so. Share prices, moving averages and volumes throughout are from Yahoo Finance and reflect the September 11, 2026 close.

Ten Canadian Penny Stocks, Ranked

Ranked on the criterion above: whether the business can fund itself, whether you can trade it, and whether there is a catalyst with a date on it. Prices are the September 11, 2026 close.

1. WELL Health Technologies (TSX: WELL)

$4.06. Market value $1.04 billion. Average daily turnover $5.6 million.

The largest business on this list by some distance, and the one that makes the clearest case that a low share price tells you nothing on its own. WELL Health runs 275 clinics across Canada, a United States provider services arm, and a health software business, and it guided in August to annual revenue of $1.58 billion to $1.65 billion for 2026.

The macro reason. Canadian primary care is short of capacity and the provinces are paying to fix it. WELL is the largest private consolidator of clinics in the country, and it buys them with borrowed money, which makes it directly levered to the cost of that money. The Bank of Canada’s policy rate has sat at 2.25% since October 2025, the low of this cycle, and that has been a tailwind for an acquisitive business. It is also the risk: the August inflation print landed with the market pricing a real chance of the next move being up rather than down, and a company whose model is “borrow, buy a clinic, integrate it” reprices quickly when the discount rate does.

What the filings say. Second-quarter revenue was $400.4 million against $356.7 million a year earlier, a gain of 12%. Adjusted EBITDA was $48.1 million, down 3%, which the company attributes to a $9.7 million benefit in the prior-year quarter from deferred Circle Medical revenue. Adjusted net income was $11.6 million, or $0.04 a share, against $25.8 million and $0.10. On a reported basis the company lost $7.8 million. Operating adjusted free cash flow attributable to shareholders was $11.7 million, flat year over year. Canadian Patient Services, the part management calls the engine, grew revenue 32% to $151.6 million on 1.4 million patient visits, up 28%. All of that is in WELL’s own second-quarter results release.

The gap between adjusted net income of $11.6 million and a reported loss of $7.8 million is the thing to watch on this name. A company that acquires constantly carries constant transaction, restructuring and integration costs, and those are real cash even when they are adjusted out.

The technical picture. At $4.06 the stock sits below its 50-day average of $4.22 and just above its 200-day of $4.14, which is a golden-cross regime by the narrowest margin on this page: the 50-day is above the 200-day by 1.8%. It is 32.4% below its 52-week high and down 11.4% over the past year. In practice this is a stock consolidating in the middle of a range, not one breaking either way.

The precedent, computed. WELL has produced six completed golden-cross regimes since 2016. The median peak gain inside them was 45.7%, the median time to that peak was 90 days, and two of the six went on to a new all-time high. The six completed death-cross regimes produced a median peak gain of 25.6%, and none made a new high. The honest reading of six observations is that the signal leans positive on this name and the sample is too small to lean on. It is a tilt, not a forecast.

What would change the view. A quarter where adjusted EBITDA grows rather than shrinks, or the WELLSTAR listing crystallising a value the market is not giving the parent. Against it: the leverage. WELL closed a $150 million senior unsecured notes offering after quarter end to term out debt to 2031, which is prudent and also a reminder of how much of it there is.

2. HIVE Digital Technologies (TSX: HIVE)

$4.20. Market value $1.15 billion. Average daily turnover $16.3 million.

By far the most liquid name on this list, trading roughly three times the dollar volume of the next one and about seventy-five times the thinnest. If you want a sub-$5 Canadian stock you can put a meaningful position into and get out of on a bad day, this is the one.

The macro reason. Two macros, pulling in different directions. Bitcoin closed at $77,414.88 USD on September 11 after falling roughly 25% through August, and mining revenue is a direct function of the coin price and the network hashrate. That half of the business is having a hard year. The other half is the opposite: HIVE’s BUZZ high-performance computing arm sells GPU capacity into an AI market that cannot get enough of it, and the company has signed an approximately $225 million USD three-year sovereign AI agreement with Bell AI Fabric supporting Cohere. That single contract takes contracted GPU cloud annual recurring revenue to roughly $110 million USD from about $35 million live today.

What the filings say. In the first quarter of fiscal 2027, the three months ended June 30, 2026, HIVE reported revenue of $79.1 million USD, up 73.5% year over year. Digital currency revenue was $72.1 million USD on 1,004 bitcoin mined, up 147% from 406 a year earlier, driven by average operational hashrate rising to 24.0 EH/s from 8.7. HPC revenue was $7.1 million USD. Gross operating margin was $24.2 million USD, or 30.6% of revenue. Adjusted EBITDA was $13.4 million USD. The company held $208.0 million USD in cash and $11.2 million USD in digital currencies at quarter end. All of this is in HIVE’s own quarterly results, filed alongside its Form 10-Q.

The headline GAAP number was a net loss of $142.9 million USD, and it is worth understanding rather than ignoring. The release attributes it to non-cash charges: an $84.7 million provision for regulatory liabilities, $53.7 million of depreciation, $7.1 million of share-based compensation and a $7.1 million change in the fair value of derivatives. Depreciation on mining rigs is a genuine economic cost, not an accounting artefact, because the machines wear out and must be replaced. The regulatory provision is a different matter and a genuine overhang.

Revenue was essentially flat for three straight fiscal years and then more than doubled in fiscal 2026. The split underneath is the more interesting series.

The technical picture. The 50-day average sits at $4.16 against a 200-day of $4.05, so the stock is in a golden-cross regime, but a weak one: the cross fired on June 22 at $6.93 and the price is 39.4% below that level. It is 57.4% below its 52-week high. A golden cross you are 39% underwater on is a reminder that the signal marks a crossing of two averages, not a floor.

The precedent, computed. HIVE has the longest crossover record here: nine completed golden-cross regimes since 2017. The median peak gain inside them was 28.9%, reached in a median of 14 days, and exactly one of the nine went on to a new all-time high. The nine completed death-cross regimes produced a higher median peak gain, 34.0%. On this stock, over nine years, the direction of the crossover has told you next to nothing about what came next. That is not an argument against HIVE. It is an argument against trading HIVE on the crossover.

What would change the view. The Bell AI Fabric revenue landing in reported numbers rather than in a contracted-ARR figure. Against it: bitcoin. A miner with a growing HPC business is still a miner, and roughly 91% of last quarter’s revenue came from mining.

3. Integra Resources (TSXV: ITR)

$3.93. Market value $797 million. Average daily turnover $1.4 million.

The only producing, profitable, free-cash-flow-positive miner on this list, and the reason it ranks third rather than eighth despite a chart that looks worse than most.

The macro reason. Gold settled at $4,391.30 on September 11, and Canadian gold equities have been the strongest corner of the TSX for months. Integra is not an explorer hoping for a discovery. It operates the Florida Canyon mine in Nevada and sold 15,794 ounces in the second quarter at an average realised price of $4,426 an ounce USD, against $3,332 a year earlier. When the metal price rises by a third and your costs rise by less, the margin expands violently. That is what happened, and it is why a company with a share price under $4 earned $12.0 million USD in a quarter. The broader setup for the sector is covered on our Canadian gold stocks page.

What the filings say. Second-quarter revenue was $70.8 million USD against $61.1 million a year earlier. Mine operating earnings were $23.4 million USD, earnings for the period $12.0 million USD, and basic earnings per share $0.06. Operating cash flow was $22.8 million USD and free cash flow $9.3 million USD, up from $2.1 million. Cash stood at $111.1 million USD at June 30 against $63.1 million at the end of 2025, and working capital at $146.5 million USD. The company’s quarterly results release and interim financial statements, filed August 11, 2026, carry all of it; the investor page holds them.

Now the part most write-ups leave out. In the same release, Integra raised its cost guidance for the year: total cash cost from a range of $1,900 to $2,100 an ounce USD to $2,300 to $2,500, and mine-site all-in sustaining cost from $2,750 to $2,950 an ounce USD to $3,300 to $3,500. Growth capital expenditure guidance roughly doubled, from $7.5 to $9.5 million USD to $16.5 to $18.5 million. Second-quarter cash costs came in at $2,495 an ounce USD against $1,849 a year earlier, and AISC at $3,371 against $2,641. Production fell: 16,379 ounces against 18,087.

Read those two paragraphs together and you have the actual investment case. Integra is not earning more because it is mining better. It is earning more because gold went up faster than its costs did, and its costs went up a great deal. At a realised price of $4,426 and an AISC of $3,371 the margin is roughly $1,055 an ounce. At the gold price of a year ago, with today’s costs, there would be no margin at all. This is a leveraged bet on the metal, dressed as an operating business.

Share count also rose, from a weighted average of 168.9 million a year ago to 202.5 million, about 20%.

The technical picture. A death-cross regime, in force since May 6 at $3.91, with the 50-day at $3.48 and the 200-day at $4.29. The stock is 38.4% below its 52-week high and has still managed to be up 6.8% over the past year, which tells you how violent the drawdown from the high was.

The precedent, computed. Five golden-cross regimes since 2017, median peak gain 55.6%, new high in two of five. Four completed death-cross regimes, median peak gain 26.9%, new high in one of four. The current death-cross regime has produced a peak of 4.6% and a drawdown of 26.6% so far. Nine total observations across both signals is not a base rate, and it is stated here as what it is.

What would change the view. Costs coming back toward the original guidance, which would turn a metal-price trade into an operating one. Against it: any sustained fall in gold, which at an AISC above $3,300 would compress the margin far faster than the headline price decline suggests.

4. High Tide (TSXV: HITI)

$3.49. Market value $307 million. Average daily turnover $217,000 on the TSX Venture Exchange.

The best answer to the question of which Canadian cannabis company actually makes money, and a useful lesson in why the sector’s share prices stayed broken long after some of its businesses stopped being broken.

The macro reason. Canadian cannabis has been a value-destruction machine since legalisation, for a structural reason: excise duty is levied per gram at a rate set when retail prices were roughly three times what they are now, so it consumes a punishing share of revenue at today’s prices. That bears down hardest on producers. It does not bear on retailers in the same way, and High Tide is a retailer. Its discount-club model trades margin for volume, and it has been taking share while producers fight over a shrinking pool of profit. The second engine is Germany, where medical cannabis demand has grown quickly and High Tide’s Remexian subsidiary distributes into it.

What the filings say. In the second quarter of fiscal 2026, the three months ended April 30, 2026, revenue was $179.3 million against $137.8 million a year earlier, a gain of 30%. Gross profit was $48.4 million, up 36%, at a 27% gross margin. Adjusted EBITDA was $13.9 million, up 73%, and $48.4 million on a trailing twelve-month basis. Net income was $24,000, against a loss of $2.8 million a year earlier: not a meaningful profit, but the first time the number has been on the right side of zero. Free cash flow was $1.5 million in the quarter and $13.4 million over twelve months. Cash and restricted cash stood at $36.5 million. The new medical cannabis distribution segment contributed $31.6 million against nil. These figures are from High Tide’s interim financial statements and management’s discussion and analysis for the quarter ended April 30, 2026, filed June 15, 2026.

The trailing free cash flow number is the one that matters. Twelve months of positive free cash flow, from a Canadian cannabis company, is rare enough to be the whole thesis.

The catalyst has a date on it. High Tide pre-announced preliminary third-quarter guidance in August: revenue of $195.0 million to $200.0 million for the quarter ended July 31, gross profit of $51.0 million to $53.5 million, and adjusted EBITDA of $15.2 million to $16.5 million. That is year-over-year growth of 30% to 34% on revenue and 43% to 55% on adjusted EBITDA, and management noted the low end of every range sits above the highest analyst estimate. Full results are due September 14, 2026, two days from this update. A company that pre-announces a beat and then reports it is a different proposition from one that surprises the market.

The technical picture. A death-cross regime: the 50-day sits at $3.25 against a 200-day of $3.36, and the price at $3.49 is above both, which is the classic shape of a stock turning up out of a downtrend before the averages catch up. It is 36.5% below its 52-week high and down 25.9% over the past year.

The precedent, computed. Four golden-cross regimes since the 2018 listing, median peak gain 45.6%, new high in one of four. Three completed death-cross regimes, median peak 27.8%, none making a new high. Seven observations. Directional at best.

The liquidity warning. $217,000 a day on the TSX Venture Exchange is thin. High Tide’s primary listing is on the Nasdaq and most of the volume is there, which means the Canadian line can gap on news that was already priced overnight in New York. If you are buying the TSXV line, use limit orders and expect a wider spread than the share price suggests.

5. BTB Real Estate Investment Trust (TSX: BTB.UN)

$3.63. Market value $321 million. Average daily turnover $281,000. Distribution 7.5 cents a unit each quarter.

The income holding, and the only name on this page that pays you to wait. Thirty cents a year against a $3.63 unit price is a yield of roughly 8.3%, which is the sort of number that is either an opportunity or a warning. The filings say which.

The macro reason. Two forces. The first is interest rates: a trust with $661 million of mortgage debt refinances continuously, and its weighted average mortgage rate has already risen to 4.44% from 4.36% a year ago as fixed loans roll at higher rates. With the Bank of Canada’s rate at its cycle low and the next move genuinely uncertain, that drift is the main risk to the distribution. The second is the shift out of office and into industrial property, which BTB is executing in the middle of. Suburban office is still 41.1% of the portfolio by value against industrial at 37.9%, and every quarter that ratio moves is a quarter the market should be willing to pay a little more for the units. Our note on retail and industrial REITs in Canada sets out why that rotation matters across the sector, and the Canadian REIT rankings cover the larger trusts.

What the filings say. Second-quarter rental revenue was $31.9 million, up 4.5% from $30.5 million. Net operating income was $18.9 million against $17.1 million. Adjusted funds from operations were $8.7 million, or 9.8 cents a unit, against a distribution of 7.5 cents, for an AFFO payout ratio of 76.5%. Adjusted funds from operations on the FFO measure were 9.7 cents a unit at a 77.3% payout. The occupancy rate was 91.3%, up ten basis points year over year, and the average lease renewal rate rose 4.6% in the quarter. The portfolio is 74 properties and 6.0 million square feet with a total asset value of $1.3 billion. The total debt ratio was 58.1%, up from 57.1%. Every figure is from BTB’s own second-quarter interim management’s discussion and analysis, pages 12 and 13.

An 8.3% yield with a 76.5% AFFO payout ratio is not a distress signal. It is the market pricing office exposure and leverage, which are both real, rather than doubting the next cheque.

The technical picture. The 50-day sits at $3.81 and the 200-day at $3.81: a golden-cross regime by 0.1%, which is to say the averages are on top of each other and the signal is meaningless this week. The unit price at $3.63 is 11.5% below its 52-week high, the smallest drawdown of any name here, and up 5.1% over the year before distributions.

The precedent, computed. BTB has the best crossover record on this page, and it is also the least volatile name, which is not a coincidence. Five completed golden-cross regimes produced a median peak gain of 27.0% and a new high in three of five, the only name here where the majority did. Five death-cross regimes produced a median peak of 12.2%. The median time to peak after a golden cross was 294 days, far longer than on any other name, which fits a security people buy for income and hold.

What would change the view. Office dispositions completing at or near book value, which would both cut the debt ratio and shift the mix. Against it: a mortgage renewal cycle at materially higher rates, which would squeeze AFFO directly and take that 76.5% payout ratio toward the danger zone.

6. Organigram Global (TSX: OGI)

$1.44. Market value $208 million. Average daily turnover $288,000.

Canada’s largest cannabis producer by market share, now with a German business attached, and the clearest example on this page of a company whose income statement and balance sheet are telling opposite stories.

The macro reason. The producer side of Canadian cannabis is where the excise structure bites hardest, and Organigram has responded by buying its way into Europe, where medical cannabis is growing and pricing is not set by a per-gram duty designed for 2018 retail prices. The April 2026 acquisition of Sanity Group gives it distribution into Germany, Switzerland, Poland and the United Kingdom. The company also carries a large strategic shareholder in British American Tobacco, which has been both the source of its balance-sheet strength and the reason its share count is complicated.

What the filings say. In the third quarter of fiscal 2026, the three months ended June 30, net revenue was $105.8 million against $70.8 million a year earlier, a rise of 49%. Gross revenue was $145.1 million, up 32%. Adjusted gross margin was $39.1 million, or 37% of net revenue against 34%. Adjusted EBITDA was $13.4 million against $5.7 million, up 136%. Selling, general and administrative expense fell to 31% of net revenue from 35%. Sanity contributed roughly €25 million, about $40 million, since closing on April 15. The company said it remains on track for full-year net revenue above $350 million. All of it is in Organigram’s own third-quarter results release, pages 1 to 3.

Now the other story, from page 3 of the same document. Cash and short-term investments fell to $11.7 million at June 30 from $84.4 million at September 30, 2025, a decline of 86%. Total liquidity including credit facilities was $49.1 million. Free cash flow in the quarter was an outflow of $3.9 million against an inflow of $5.0 million a year earlier, and cash used in operating activities after working capital was $4.3 million.

And the headline profit needs reading. Net income was $105.5 million against a loss of $6.3 million. The release itself explains, on page 2, that the swing was “primarily attributable to higher non-cash fair value gains on preferred shares” as well as higher revenue and margin. A company does not become profitable because the accounting value of its own preferred shares moved. The operating measure, adjusted EBITDA of $13.4 million, is the one that describes the business.

The five-year picture is a business that stalled for two years and then stepped up sharply, first on operational improvement and then on an acquisition. What the chart does not show is that the step up was paid for in cash.

The technical picture. The deepest death-cross regime on this page: the 50-day at $1.48 sits 19.3% below the 200-day at $1.84, and the price at $1.44 is below both. The stock is 50.3% under its 52-week high and down 37.1% over the year, in a quarter when revenue grew 49%. That divergence is the market pricing the cash burn rather than the revenue line.

The precedent, computed. Five golden-cross regimes since 2016, median peak gain 36.2%, new high in two of five. Four completed death-cross regimes, median peak gain 19.8%, reached in a median of just 10 days, and none making a new high. The pattern on Organigram is that rallies inside downtrends are short and sharp, which is a warning against treating a bounce as a turn.

What would change the view. A quarter with positive free cash flow, or a financing that refills the balance sheet without heavy dilution. Against it: $11.7 million of cash in a business of this size is not a lot of room, and the market knows it.

7. Standard Lithium (TSXV: SLI)

$3.08. Market value $760 million. Average daily turnover $554,000.

A pre-revenue lithium developer with a $137.3 million USD balance sheet, no debt, a United States federal grant behind it, and a decision due this year that will define it.

The macro reason. Lithium is in the third year of a brutal price correction, and every developer on earth has been repriced for it. The offsetting force is industrial policy: the United States Department of Energy awarded Smackover Lithium a $225 million USD grant in January 2025 to build domestic lithium supply, and that money does not care what the spot price does this quarter. Standard Lithium’s South West Arkansas project sits in the Smackover formation, extracting lithium from brine rather than hard rock. For the sector view, our Canadian lithium stocks page covers the other listed names.

What the filings say. The second-quarter results release, dated August 10, 2026, reports cash of $137.3 million USD and working capital of $137.1 million USD at June 30, and states that the company has no term or revolving debt obligations. Both numbers are on the company’s news page and in the interim financial statements filed the same day.

For a pre-revenue company the balance sheet is the business, so that is the number that matters. What the cash buys is a sequence of dated milestones. In the quarter the company concluded the federal environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act with a Finding of No Significant Impact, issued without further mitigation measures, which was a condition of the grant. It signed an engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning agreement with S&B Engineers and Constructors for the central processing facility, and an engineering, procurement and construction management agreement with Wood Group USA for the upstream well field. Both carry a Limited Notice to Proceed, which lets work continue ahead of a full decision. Management says it expects to approve a final investment decision and begin construction in 2026, and to publish a preliminary economic assessment for its Franklin project in the third quarter.

The technical picture. The widest gap between averages on this page: the 50-day at $3.31 is 35.3% below the 200-day at $5.11. That spread is the arithmetic signature of a stock that has fallen a long way in a straight line. The price is 60.1% below its 52-week high and down 23.2% over twelve months.

The precedent, computed. Six completed golden-cross regimes since 2016 with a median peak gain of 83.8%, the second highest here, and a new high in two of six. Five completed death-cross regimes with a median peak of 38.1% and none making a new high. Developers move in regimes rather than trends, and the numbers reflect that: across those six golden-cross regimes the median peak was 83.8%, so when this stock has turned, it turned hard. Eleven observations across both signals, so treat the direction as suggestive and the magnitude as unreliable.

What would change the view. The final investment decision landing in 2026 with project financing attached, which converts a permitting story into a construction story. Against it: any slip in that decision. A developer whose milestone moves right by a year is a developer that has to raise money at a lower price, and with no revenue there is no other source.

8. Cardiol Therapeutics (TSX: CRDL)

$2.75. Market value $321 million. Average daily turnover $369,000.

A clinical-stage pharmaceutical company, up 85.8% over twelve months and the strongest chart on this page. It ranks eighth anyway, because what it is doing is spending money to find out whether a drug works.

The macro reason. Biotech valuations are long-duration assets, more sensitive to the discount rate than almost anything else listed in Canada, which is why the sector rallied through a falling-rate cycle and why a genuine change in the direction of policy rates would hurt it first. The company-specific macro is simpler: recurrent pericarditis is a condition with one approved branded therapy and a price point to match, so a second entrant with good data has a clear commercial path.

What the filings say. Cardiol’s interim financial statements for the three and six months ended June 30, 2026 report cash and cash equivalents of $26,081,066, up from $21,416,684 at December 31, 2025. Net loss for the quarter was $6,081,827 against $8,354,371 a year earlier, and for the half year $16,900,416 against $16,642,024. Research and development expense was $3,196,057 in the quarter against $2,731,681. Total assets were $29,357,847 against total liabilities of $5,328,926, so the company is essentially a pile of cash with a clinical programme attached and no debt worth the name. Management has said the balance is sufficient to fund operations into the fourth quarter of 2027. The documents are on the company’s investor page.

The number that belongs in any honest write-up of this stock is on the same page of the same statements: the weighted average share count was 114,935,371 for the quarter against 82,653,373 a year earlier. That is 39% more shares in twelve months. The accumulated deficit stands at $229,973,391. A clinical-stage company funds itself by selling stock, every financing is priced at a discount, and a holder who does nothing is diluted every time. The 85.8% gain over the past year happened despite that, which is the point: the stock has to run hard just to keep the existing holder whole.

Five years, roughly $161 million of cumulative losses, and no revenue in any of them. That is not a criticism, it is what developing a drug costs, and it is the number that has to be funded by issuing stock until a trial says otherwise.

The catalyst. The pivotal MAVERIC trial in recurrent pericarditis passed 75% of target enrolment in April 2026, and the Phase II ARCHER study in acute myocarditis reported a significant reduction in left ventricular mass. A readout is what this stock trades on, and until one arrives the price is a running estimate of the odds.

The technical picture. A strong golden-cross regime: the 50-day at $2.16 sits 26.8% above the 200-day at $1.70, and the cross fired on April 17 at $2.06, with the price 33.5% higher since. The stock is only 13.0% below its 52-week high, second best on this page.

The precedent, computed. This is where the record contradicts the chart, and it is worth stating plainly. Cardiol has produced six completed golden-cross regimes since 2018. The median peak gain inside them was 17.9%, the median time to that peak was six days, and none of the six went on to a new all-time high. The six death-cross regimes produced a median peak of 5.8%, also with no new highs. In other words, across those six regimes a golden cross on this stock was followed by a quick pop and not much else, and the one regime that produced a 273.4% peak, in 2023, is the sole reason the average looks good at all. The current regime is already 99 days old with a 30.1% drawdown inside it. Anyone buying this chart because the averages crossed should know that on this specific name the crossing has been worth about a fortnight.

What would change the view. MAVERIC data. Nothing else on this page has a single event that matters as much. Against it: the dilution runs whether the trial reads out or not.

9. DMG Blockchain Solutions (TSXV: DMGI)

$0.555. Market value $115 million. Average daily turnover $427,000.

The genuinely sub-dollar name on this list, and the one where the price chart and the income statement disagree most sharply.

The macro reason. The same bitcoin macro that drives HIVE, at roughly a tenth of the scale and with none of the artificial-intelligence offset. Bitcoin at $77,414.88 USD on September 11, after a 25% fall through August, sets the revenue line for a pure miner more directly than any management decision does. DMG’s differentiator is a focus on what it calls clean and traceable bitcoin, which is a real niche and a small one. Our Canadian crypto stocks page covers the listed alternatives.

What the filings say. For the quarter ended June 30, 2026, the third quarter of DMG’s September fiscal year, revenue was $6,364,212 against $11,614,710 a year earlier. That is a decline of 45%. Over nine months, revenue was $24,849,511 against $35,892,109. Net loss for the quarter was $3,935,116 against $381,154, and for nine months $9,642,464 against $6,830,506. Basic loss per share was $0.02 in the quarter and $0.05 over nine months. Comprehensive loss for nine months was $38,596,841, against comprehensive income of $11,728,853 in the same period a year earlier, a swing driven by the revaluation of the bitcoin it holds. The filings are on DMG’s own financials page.

The balance sheet is where the risk sits. At June 30 the company held $2,788,470 of actual cash and $31,585,358 of digital currency, against total loans payable of $19,713,551. Total assets were $102,289,529 against $132,030,085 nine months earlier, and shareholders’ equity fell to $77,344,581 from $114,589,170. In plain terms: the treasury is bitcoin, not cash, so a fall in the coin price hits the asset side and the revenue line at the same moment, while the loans stay exactly where they are.

Revenue down 45%, losses widening, and the stock up 85% over twelve months. That combination is not irrational: miners are valued on the coin they hold and the hashrate they can bring online, not on trailing revenue. It does mean that anyone buying this is buying a bitcoin proxy with an operating business bolted on, and should size it accordingly.

The technical picture. The strongest momentum reading on this page: the 50-day at $0.504 is 39.5% above the 200-day at $0.361, and the price is 24.0% below its 52-week high after an 85.0% twelve-month gain.

The precedent, computed. Six completed golden-cross regimes since 2018, median peak gain 84.7%, the highest of any name here, reached in a median of 26 days. One of the six made a new all-time high. Six death-cross regimes produced a median peak of 58.0%. Read those two numbers together: on DMGI, a 58% rally inside a confirmed downtrend is the median outcome, not an exception. This is a security that moves in violent swings in both regimes, and the crossover tells you almost nothing about which one you are in.

What would change the view. A sustained bitcoin recovery, or a hosting or infrastructure contract that adds revenue not tied to the coin price. Against it: at this scale, a bad bitcoin year is an existential question rather than a bad year.

10. Li-FT Power (TSXV: LIFT)

$2.52. Market value $239 million. Average daily turnover $215,000.

Last, and on the list deliberately. Li-FT is what most people actually picture when they think of a Canadian penny stock: a pre-revenue mineral explorer with a large land package, a well-known deposit, no income and a cash clock running. It is here as the honest representative of that category rather than as a recommendation, and everything above it on this list ranks higher for reasons the filings make plain.

The macro reason. The Yellowknife Lithium Project in the Northwest Territories is a hard-rock spodumene asset, which means its economics are levered to the lithium price in a way brine projects are not, and lithium has been falling for three years. There is a Canadian policy tailwind in critical minerals funding, and there is no revenue on the other side of it.

What the filings say. For the three months ended June 30, 2026 the company reported a net and comprehensive loss of $5.368 million, against $1.017 million for the three months ended May 31, 2025. For the six months, a loss of $12.590 million against $1.433 million. Loss per share was $0.08 in the quarter and $0.21 over six months. The weighted average share count was 68,069,531 for the quarter against 59,187,262 for the six-month period, which tells you shares were issued during it. The documents are on Li-FT’s financial reports page.

The balance sheet tells you how that was paid for. Cash stood at $18.814 million at June 30 against $1.816 million at December 31, 2025, and the reason it rose is on the cash flow statement: the company raised $48.166 million in gross proceeds from issuing shares during the six months, at a cost of $2.614 million. Over the same period it spent $10.643 million on exploration and evaluation acquisition costs and $9.360 million on exploration and evaluation expenditure, and used $6.306 million in operations. Short-term investments were a further $3.390 million.

That is the penny stock model in one paragraph. The company is well funded today because it sold a large block of stock at some price to somebody, and that stock is now part of the count every existing holder’s stake is divided into.

Two things about those comparatives matter and are easy to get wrong. First, Li-FT changed its financial year end, so the quarter ended June 30, 2026 is compared against the quarter ended May 31, 2025. They are not the same three months of the year, and a like-for-like read is not available. Second, the loss grew roughly fivefold year over year while the company generated no revenue at all, which is what a development programme in full flight looks like on an income statement. The next quarterly filing covers the period ending September 30, 2026 and is due at the end of November.

The technical picture. A deep death-cross regime: the 50-day at $3.17 is 36.9% below the 200-day at $5.03, and the price at $2.52 is below both. The stock is 71.8% below its 52-week high, the largest drawdown on this page by a wide margin, and yet it is up 8.6% over twelve months, which tells you how far it fell and how sharply it bounced off the bottom.

The precedent, computed. Li-FT only listed in 2022, and it has produced two completed golden-cross regimes and one completed death-cross regime. Two observations is not a record. The median peak gain of 123.6% after a golden cross, and the fact that neither made a new high, are reported here for completeness and should carry no weight in a decision. When a stock’s history is this short, the honest answer is that there is no base rate.

What would change the view. A resource update or an economic study that puts a credible number on the deposit, or lithium turning. Against it: everything. This is the highest-risk holding on the page and the position size should say so.

The Ten at a Glance, From the Filings

Every figure in this table comes from the named company document. Prices, market values and turnover are market data as at the September 11, 2026 close. Currencies differ by company and are marked: HIVE, Integra and Standard Lithium report in United States dollars, the rest in Canadian dollars.

#	Company	Price	Market value	Daily turnover	Latest quarter	Revenue	Cash at quarter end	Source document
1	WELL Health (TSX: WELL)	$4.06	$1.04B	$5.6M	Q2 2026, ended Jun 30	$400.4M	not disclosed in the release	Q2 2026 results release
2	HIVE Digital (TSX: HIVE)	$4.20	$1.15B	$16.3M	Q1 FY2027, ended Jun 30	$79.1M USD	$208.0M USD plus $11.2M USD in digital currency	Q1 FY2027 release, p.1 to p.2
3	Integra Resources (TSXV: ITR)	$3.93	$797M	$1.4M	Q2 2026, ended Jun 30	$70.8M USD	$111.1M USD	Q2 2026 results release
4	High Tide (TSXV: HITI)	$3.49	$307M	$217K	Q2 FY2026, ended Apr 30	$179.3M	$36.5M	Q2 FY2026 MD&A
5	BTB REIT (TSX: BTB.UN)	$3.63	$321M	$281K	Q2 2026, ended Jun 30	$31.9M rental revenue	$1.28B total assets	Q2 2026 interim MD&A, p.12
6	Organigram Global (TSX: OGI)	$1.44	$208M	$288K	Q3 FY2026, ended Jun 30	$105.8M net revenue	$11.7M, or $49.1M total liquidity	Q3 FY2026 release, p.3
7	Standard Lithium (TSXV: SLI)	$3.08	$760M	$554K	Q2 2026, ended Jun 30	pre-revenue	$137.3M USD, no debt	Q2 2026 results release
8	Cardiol Therapeutics (TSX: CRDL)	$2.75	$321M	$369K	Q2 2026, ended Jun 30	pre-revenue	$26,081,066	Q2 2026 interim financial statements
9	DMG Blockchain (TSXV: DMGI)	$0.555	$115M	$427K	Q3 FY2026, ended Jun 30	$6,364,212	$2,788,470 plus $31,585,358 in digital currency	Q3 FY2026 release, p.2 to p.3
10	Li-FT Power (TSXV: LIFT)	$2.52	$239M	$215K	Q2 2026, ended Jun 30	pre-revenue	$18.8M	Q2 2026 interim financial statements

Three things jump out of that table.

Turnover varies by a factor of seventy-five. HIVE trades $16.3 million a day and High Tide’s Canadian line trades $217,000. On the same $10,000 position those are entirely different risks, and the one that shows up in the share price is not the one that hurts.

Four of the ten have no revenue at all. Standard Lithium, Cardiol and Li-FT are pre-revenue by design, and DMG has revenue that halved. For those four the cash balance is not a footnote, it is the entire fundamental analysis.

Three of the ten are worth more than half a billion dollars. A low share price and a small company are different things, and conflating them is the most common error made on this part of the market.

If one of these has earned a place in your speculative sleeve, the account comes first. Open a Questrade® account if you need one that reaches the TSX Venture Exchange and the CSE, then size the position against the turnover column above rather than against how much you like the company.

What the Crossover Record Actually Shows

Almost every penny stock list you will read leans on momentum: the stock crossed above its 200-day average, the trend has turned, and so on. We ran the arithmetic on all ten names rather than asserting it.

For each stock we took every 50-day and 200-day moving average crossover since it listed, and measured what the price did over the following 30, 60, 90 and 180 days. That is 59 golden crosses and 54 death crosses across ten securities and, in HIVE’s case, nearly a decade of daily closes. The sample sizes printed on the chart are slightly smaller at the longer horizons, because a crossover that fired recently does not yet have 180 days of price history behind it.

The results, with n stated so you can weigh them:

• At 30 days the two signals are identical. The median gain after a golden cross was +4.0% across 58 events. After a death cross it was also +4.0%, across 54 events. A month after the averages cross, in either direction, nothing has happened.
• At 90 days a gap opens, and it is small. Golden cross median +5.6% (n=55), death cross median -2.0% (n=51). Seven and a half percentage points of separation over three months, on securities that routinely move that much in a week.
• At 180 days the gap is real. Golden cross median +18.9% (n=54) against death cross -3.8% (n=46). Six months is long enough for the underlying trend the averages are measuring to actually assert itself.
• New highs are rare in both regimes. Fourteen of 54 completed golden-cross regimes went on to a new all-time high. Two of 49 death-cross regimes did.

And the finding that matters most:

• The mean is nothing like the median. The average 90-day return after a golden cross was +31.4%. The median was +5.6%. That enormous gap is the shape of this entire asset class: a small number of enormous winners, a large number of mediocre-to-bad outcomes, and an average that describes an experience almost nobody has. If you buy ten penny stocks on a signal, the average of your ten will probably look like the median, not the mean, because you would have had to own the specific one that went up 1,700%.

What we take from this: a crossover is worth knowing as context and is not worth trading on its own over any horizon shorter than six months. It is reported in each section above for exactly that reason, alongside the number of observations, and never as a reason to buy. Where a stock’s record contradicts the current chart, as it does on Cardiol, that contradiction is in the write-up rather than buried.

If the mechanics of reading a chart or a quote are new, our explainer on how to read a stock quote covers the bid, the ask and the spread, which is where the real cost of these trades is hiding.

What Happened to the 2023 List

The previous version of this page ranked ten Canadian penny stocks. Three years on, here is what became of each name that is no longer on it. This is the section that makes the rest of the page worth reading, because the failure rate is the single most important number in this market and no list ever publishes it.

Gear Energy (TSX: GXE) no longer exists as a public company. Shareholders approved a plan of arrangement under which the company’s shares were acquired and most of its assets were transferred to a newly formed entity, Lotus Creek Exploration. Gear shares were delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange within a few business days of February 5, 2025. Holders were paid, so this is the benign version of a name disappearing, but it disappeared.

CloudMD (TSXV: DOC) was taken private at four cents a share. CPS Capital acquired all outstanding shares, and the stock was delisted from the TSX Venture Exchange after the close on July 10, 2024. Four cents. A holder from the 2023 list lost effectively everything.

Uranium Royalty (URC) left the Toronto Stock Exchange. Following a plan of arrangement combining its royalty assets with those held by Sweetwater Royalties, the shares were delisted from the TSX at the close on July 28, 2026 and the successor company listed on Nasdaq. The business did well. The Canadian listing simply stopped existing, which matters if your account does not trade United States securities or if the position sat in a registered plan with a Canadian-listing restriction.

American Lithium (TSXV: LI) trades at $0.45, down from a price that made it a credible number three on the old list, and 61.5% below its 52-week high. It is not on the new list because on the criterion above, funding itself and being tradeable, it does not rank ahead of the ten that are. It is still listed and still operating.

Fobi AI (TSXV: FOBI) trades at $0.035 and turns over roughly $9,350 of stock a day. The entire company is valued at $8.6 million. At that level of liquidity a $5,000 position is more than half a day’s volume, which means there is no orderly exit at any price you choose. This is the clearest example on the page of why liquidity is a ranking criterion and not a footnote.

FP Newspapers (TSXV: FP) comes off the list on liquidity alone. At $0.78 the business is intact and the stock is only 17.9% off its 52-week high, but the company is worth $5.4 million and trades about $4,200 of stock a day. A $10,000 position is more than two full days of trading volume. That is not an investment, it is a commitment.

Sangoma Technologies (TSX: STC) graduated out of the definition, on paper. At $5.11 it is above the $5 line this page uses, so it no longer qualifies as a penny stock. It would be misleading to present that as good news: the stock is down 32.9% over the past year and 39.8% below its 52-week high. It leaves the list on a technicality rather than on merit.

Avanti Helium (TSXV: AVN) comes off for a reason worth stating precisely. At $0.465 the stock is up 82.4% over twelve months and there is a genuine story at its Montana helium project. We could not find or verify an interim earnings release, management’s discussion and analysis, or financial statements published anywhere we can reach, and the most recent document we could verify on the company’s own site predates the reporting period. Under the sourcing rule this page follows, every figure has to come from the company’s own filing. If we cannot get the filing, the company does not get ranked. That is a statement about our standard, not an allegation about the company.

Orion Digital (TSX: ORIO), formerly Mogo, comes off on both counts. At $1.47 the company is worth $34.7 million, trades about $41,000 of stock a day and is down 43.0% over twelve months. Thin and falling is the combination this page ranks lowest.

Two of the ten names on the original list survive into this one: HIVE Digital and Organigram. Two more, BTB REIT and Cardiol, appeared on the interim version of this page and remain. That is roughly a 40% survival rate over three years for a list that was, at the time, a reasonable set of picks. Hold that number in mind while reading any penny stock list, including this one.

The Best Cannabis Penny Stocks in Canada

Cannabis is the sector most people mean when they search for Canadian penny stocks, and it deserves a direct answer rather than a list of tickers.

The sector-level problem is the excise duty. Canada levies cannabis excise at a flat rate per gram, set when legal retail prices were roughly three times today’s levels. As prices fell, the duty did not, so it now eats a punishing share of every dollar a producer collects. You can see the scale of it directly in Organigram’s numbers: gross revenue of $145.1 million became net revenue of $105.8 million in a single quarter, with $39.3 million going to excise taxes. That is 27% of gross revenue, before the cost of actually growing anything. No amount of operational excellence fixes a 27% top-line levy.

That is why the retailer beats the producers. High Tide sells cannabis rather than growing it, so the excise problem is upstream of its margin. It reported 30% revenue growth, 27% gross margin, positive adjusted EBITDA of $13.9 million and trailing twelve-month free cash flow of $13.4 million. Among Canadian cannabis companies trading under $5, it is the one with a business that funds itself.

Organigram is the best of the producers, with a caveat. It holds the number one Canadian market share position in vapes, milled flower and concentrates, grew net revenue 49% and more than doubled adjusted EBITDA. The caveat is the balance sheet: cash and short-term investments fell 86% in nine months to $11.7 million.

What about the large-cap names? Canopy Growth at $1.28 and Cronos at $4.32 also satisfy the under-$5 price test. Neither is ranked here, because on the criterion this page applies, funding itself, neither currently makes the cut ahead of the ten above. Tilray at $5.56 sits above the price line entirely.

The honest summary: the Canadian cannabis trade is not a growth story with a bad chart. It is a sector with a structural tax problem, in which the retail and international distribution layers are where the profit has migrated. Position accordingly.

Canadian Penny Stocks by Sector

Where these companies actually come from, and what that implies.

Mining and metals is the largest single category on the TSX Venture Exchange by a wide margin, and it splits cleanly. Producers such as Integra have revenue, costs and a margin you can measure. Explorers and developers have a deposit, a cash balance and a burn rate. The two are analysed in completely different ways and lumping them together is the most common mistake in this category. Our Canadian mining stocks page deals with the larger listings on both sides of that split.

Energy and critical minerals is where lithium sits, and the sector has spent three years being repriced for a commodity that fell rather than rose. Standard Lithium and Li-FT are both here. So is the argument that industrial policy money, like the $225 million USD United States Department of Energy grant behind Smackover Lithium, changes the odds for the projects that receive it. Canadian energy stocks covers the larger producers in the same sector.

Crypto and digital infrastructure gives you HIVE and DMG, plus a long tail of smaller miners. This is the one sector where the revenue line is set almost entirely outside the company, by the bitcoin price and the global hashrate. The interesting development is that the largest Canadian miners are converting data-centre capacity to artificial intelligence workloads, which is a genuinely different business, and one the Canadian AI stocks page follows on the larger listings.

Healthcare and life sciences covers both ends: WELL Health, which is an operating business with $1.6 billion of revenue guidance, and Cardiol, which is a clinical programme with a cash runway. Same sector, opposite risk profiles.

Cannabis is discussed above.

Technology is the thinnest category at this price level, which is itself informative. The good Canadian software businesses re-rated out of penny territory or were acquired. What is left below $5 is mostly companies that did not work, which is why none features here. Our Canadian fintech stocks page covers the larger listings.

Real estate is unusual at this price. BTB is a genuine REIT with $1.3 billion of assets whose units happen to trade at $3.63, and the low unit price is a function of the unit count rather than distress. Compare it against the income names on the Canadian dividend stocks page.

Penny Stocks Under $1: What Actually Qualifies

If your definition of a penny stock is the strict one, under a dollar, the list gets very short and the risk profile changes completely.

Of the ten ranked above, exactly one qualifies: DMG Blockchain at $0.555. That is not an accident of selection. The under-$1 market in Canada is overwhelmingly made up of pre-revenue explorers, shells and companies on the way down, and applying the criterion of this page, funding itself and being tradeable, eliminates almost all of them.

Three structural things change below a dollar:

The spread becomes the dominant cost. At $0.55 a one-cent spread is 1.8% of the price. At $0.04 a half-cent spread is 12.5%. Round-trip that and the company has to appreciate materially before you break even on the transaction alone.

Dilution compounds faster. A company raising $5 million at $0.30 issues 16.7 million shares. The same raise at $3.00 issues 1.7 million. The lower the price, the more of the company each financing costs, which is the mechanism described in the section on why these stocks are cheap.

The exchange’s own delisting thresholds come into view. The TSX Venture Exchange and the CSE both maintain continued listing requirements, and sustained trading at very low prices tends to attract consolidations, share rollbacks and, in the worst cases, a move to the NEX board. A share consolidation does not change what you own, but it reliably precedes further weakness.

If you are specifically hunting the sub-dollar market, the honest advice is that position size matters more than stock selection, and the section on position sizing below is the part of this page to read twice.

TSXV vs CSE: Where Canadian Penny Stocks Trade

Three venues, and the differences are real rather than cosmetic.

The Toronto Stock Exchange is the senior market. Its listing requirements are the most demanding in the country, and a company listed there has cleared a meaningful bar on assets, working capital and governance. Four of the ten above trade on it. A TSX listing does not promise a company will succeed, but it is a filter. The exchange publishes its listing requirements and they are worth ten minutes of anybody’s time.

The TSX Venture Exchange is the junior market, and it is where most Canadian penny stocks actually live. It has two tiers, with Tier 1 requiring more financial strength than Tier 2, and it has a lower-tier board called NEX for companies that have fallen below continued listing standards. A TSXV listing means a real regulator, real continuous disclosure obligations and real financial statements four times a year. It does not mean the company is profitable, funded or likely to survive. Six of the ten above trade here.

The Canadian Securities Exchange has the lightest listing requirements of the three and correspondingly the widest range of quality. It was built for early-stage issuers and it has been the venue of choice for sectors the senior exchanges were slow to accept. Issuers still file continuous disclosure. The regulatory floor is lower, the population is younger, and the median outcome is worse. The exchange documents its own listing process.

The practical implication for a buyer is about access and about spreads. Not every discount broker offers full CSE access, and the further down the venue ladder you go the wider the quoted spread tends to be at any given price. Check both before you commit to a name.

The Real Risks of Canadian Penny Stocks

Not boilerplate. On this part of the market these four are the analysis.

Liquidity risk

This is first because it is the one that converts a bad decision into a catastrophic one, and the one investors consistently underrate.

The mechanism: the price you see quoted is the last trade, and on a stock trading $40,000 a day that trade might have been for 500 shares. Your 10,000 shares do not have a price, they have a queue. On a day when everyone wants out at once, there is no bid at the last price, and sometimes no bid at all for several cents below it.

The numbers from this page make it concrete. HIVE turns over $16.3 million a day. Fobi AI, a holding on the previous version of this list, turns over about $9,350. The same $20,000 position is a rounding error in one and more than two days of total market volume in the other.

The test to apply before you buy: if your position is more than roughly a tenth of a normal day’s dollar volume, it is too big, no matter how much you like the company. Look up the average volume, multiply by the price, divide by ten. That is your ceiling.

Dilution risk

The second most important and the least visible, because it does not appear on a price chart at all.

A company with no revenue funds itself by issuing shares. Each issue is usually priced at a discount to market and frequently carries warrants, which are options to buy more shares later at a fixed price. Every one of those transactions reduces your percentage of the company.

You do not have to guess at the scale. It is disclosed on the face of every income statement as the weighted average share count. Two examples from the filings behind this page:

• Cardiol Therapeutics: 114,935,371 weighted average shares in the second quarter of 2026 against 82,653,373 a year earlier. Up 39% in twelve months.
• Integra Resources: 202,481,000 against 168,930,000. Up 20% in twelve months, at a profitable producing miner.

Li-FT Power raised $48.166 million in gross share proceeds in a single six-month period. That money is why the company is funded. It is also why everyone who held before it is now a smaller owner.

Before buying anything in this category, open the latest interim financial statements, find the weighted average share count, and compare it to the same line a year earlier. It takes two minutes and it is the single highest-value check available to a retail investor.

Single-project and single-commodity risk

A large company that has a bad year in one division has other divisions. A junior explorer with one project does not. If the drill results disappoint, the permit is refused or the commodity price falls, there is no second business to carry it.

Four of the ten above carry a version of this concentration. Standard Lithium is South West Arkansas and lithium. Li-FT is Yellowknife and lithium. Cardiol is one drug in one indication. Integra is one producing mine, and its earnings this quarter were made by the gold price rather than by the mine, which is the same risk wearing a different coat.

This is not a reason to avoid them. It is a reason to size them as what they are: individual bets on individual outcomes, not diversified businesses.

Promotion and fraud

Every market with low listing standards and retail participation attracts people who will take advantage of both.

The Ontario Securities Commission has issued a specific warning about this, and it is worth reading rather than summarising: the regulator’s investor alert on ramp-and-dump schemes describes fraudulent investment groups that build a position, drive the price up with coordinated promotion, and sell into the buying they created.

The pattern to recognise: an unsolicited approach, a group chat or messaging channel, a specific price target, urgency, and a stock you had never heard of that has recently moved a long way on no news you can find. Legitimate companies publish results and file them. They do not message you.

A simple discipline defeats nearly all of it. If you cannot find the company’s own financial statements, do not buy the stock. That rule alone took one name off this page.

Position Sizing: The Part Most Penny Stock Guides Skip

If you take one thing from this page, take this. On this part of the market, position size determines your outcome far more than stock selection does, and it is the only variable you fully control.

Start from what a total loss would mean. Not a 30% drawdown. A zero. Two names from the 2023 version of this list effectively went to zero for their holders. That is the base rate, and the correct planning assumption for any individual holding here.

A workable framework. Decide in advance what percentage of your total portfolio is allocated to speculation. For most people that number is between 2% and 10%, and it should be a number you could lose entirely without changing any plan you have. Then divide that allocation across several names rather than concentrating it, because the distribution of outcomes in this market is lottery-shaped: most holdings do nothing or worse, and the returns come from one or two. Concentrating into your single favourite idea is the precise way to miss the one that works.

Then apply the liquidity ceiling. Whatever position size your allocation allows, cap it at roughly a tenth of average daily dollar volume. On the thinner names on this page that cap will bind before your allocation does, and that is the system working.

Rebalance the winners out. If a position triples, it is now a much larger share of your portfolio than you decided it should be, and the decision to leave it there is a new decision you never consciously made. Trimming back to your original weight banks the result and keeps the risk where you set it.

What this looks like in practice. On a $100,000 portfolio with a 5% speculative allocation, that is $5,000 in total, across perhaps four names, so $1,250 each. On a name trading $217,000 a day, the liquidity ceiling is around $21,700, so the allocation binds. On a name trading $9,350 a day, the ceiling is $935, so liquidity binds and the position should be smaller than planned or skipped.

The broader framework for how much of a portfolio belongs in any single position is covered on our guide to how the stock market works, and the case for the compounding half of a portfolio is on the best Canadian stocks page.

Should You Hold Penny Stocks in a TFSA?

This comes up more than any other question about the category, and the answer is genuinely two-sided.

The case for. If a speculative holding works, it can work spectacularly, and a tax-free savings account shelters the entire gain permanently. A position that goes up five times in a TFSA costs you nothing in tax, ever. The Canada Revenue Agency’s TFSA guidance sets out the rules.

The case against, which is stronger for most people. A loss inside a TFSA is dead weight. You cannot claim it against capital gains anywhere, and the contribution room the money occupied does not come back. Lose $7,000 on a speculative name in a TFSA and you have destroyed $7,000 of lifetime tax-free capacity, permanently. In a non-registered account the same loss produces a capital loss you can carry back three years or forward indefinitely.

Given the base rate on this page, two of ten names going to zero over three years, the expected value of the tax shelter is lower than it looks and the expected cost of the lost room is higher.

A middle path many investors use. Hold speculative positions in a non-registered account where the losses do at least some work, and use registered room for the holdings you expect to compound. Our best TFSA stocks page covers what belongs in that room, and if you are still deciding where to open the plan, the best broker for a TFSA comparison is the place to start. The same logic applies to an RRSP, with the extra point that RRSP room is tied to earned income and regenerates far more slowly.

One more caution specific to registered accounts: some brokers restrict or prohibit certain low-priced or venture-listed securities inside registered plans, and a security that is delisted while held in a registered account can be genuinely awkward to dispose of. Check before you buy rather than after.

Ready to set the account up properly

If you have decided a small speculative allocation belongs in a non-registered account, that is an account you may not have yet. Opening a Questrade® account gives you one that reaches all three Canadian venues, so you are not later forced to skip a name because the platform does not carry the TSX Venture Exchange or the CSE. Fund it in Canadian dollars, keep the speculative sleeve separate from your registered plans, and size the first position using the liquidity ceiling above rather than your enthusiasm.

The “It Was Only 30 Cents Once” Trap

Every penny stock conversation eventually reaches the story: this company was 30 cents and now look at it. Before you act on any version of that story, understand that the chart you are checking it against is probably lying to you, and in both directions.

Price history on every major data provider is adjusted for splits and consolidations. That adjustment is correct for measuring returns and badly misleading for answering the question “what did this stock cost back then”.

Two Canadian examples, both checkable in about a minute.

Aurora Cannabis looks like it once traded above $1,800 a share. Its adjusted price series peaks at $1,808.40 on October 15, 2018. Nobody ever paid anything close to that. Aurora has carried out two share consolidations since, one at a ratio of one for twelve in May 2020 and another at one for ten in February 2024. Multiply those together and every pre-2020 price in the series has been scaled by 120. The actual traded price at that 2018 peak was roughly $15.

Shopify looks like it was a $3 stock in 2015. Its adjusted series opens at $3.12 on May 21, 2015, which reads exactly like a penny stock that made it. It was not. Shopify listed at a real valuation with real revenue, and the $3.12 is the consequence of a ten-for-one forward split in June 2022. The real first-day price was roughly ten times that.

So the correction runs both ways. Forward splits make good companies look like former penny stocks. Reverse splits erase the evidence that a company was ever a penny stock at all, which is the more dangerous error, because a consolidation is what companies do after the price has collapsed. A stock showing a long, orderly decline from a high price may in fact have fallen from a few cents, been consolidated, and fallen again.

What to do about it. Before believing any historical price claim about a small company, check the split history. Every data provider publishes it, usually on the same page as the dividend history. If there is a consolidation in there, the old prices on the chart are not prices anyone paid.

And the survivorship point that underlies the whole genre: for every Canadian small cap that became a household name, the TSX Venture Exchange has delisted many multiples more, and nobody writes those up. The previous version of this page is a small, honest sample of the real distribution. Ten names, chosen with some care, and three years later two no longer trade, one went private at four cents, and one has no tradeable liquidity left. Stories of the ones that worked are true, and they are not evidence.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is considered a penny stock in Canada?

There is no legal definition in Canada. This page uses a share price under $5 CAD on the TSX, the TSX Venture Exchange or the CSE, which is the working definition most Canadian investors have in mind. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission uses under $5 USD and generally means over-the-counter securities. Note that a price test says nothing about company size: three of the ten stocks ranked on this page are worth more than $300 million and two are worth more than $1 billion.

Are Canadian penny stocks a good investment?

For most portfolios, only as a small and deliberately sized speculative allocation. The base rate is harsh: of the ten names on the 2023 version of this page, two no longer trade, one was taken private at four cents a share, and one now trades about $9,350 of stock a day. The four names that survive did so because they had revenue, cash or both. That is the criterion this list ranks on and it is the one to apply to any name you consider.

How do I buy penny stocks in Canada?

Open a brokerage account that reaches the exchange the stock trades on. Every Canadian discount broker offers the TSX, most offer the TSX Venture Exchange, and CSE access varies. Fund the account, decide the position size before you look at the chart, check that your position is no more than about a tenth of the stock’s average daily dollar volume, and place a limit order rather than a market order. The section on how to buy above sets out the full sequence.

What is the difference between the TSXV and the CSE?

The TSX Venture Exchange is the junior board of the TMX group, with two tiers and a lower NEX board for companies below continued listing standards. The Canadian Securities Exchange has lighter listing requirements and a younger, more variable population of issuers. Both require continuous disclosure and quarterly financial statements. The senior Toronto Stock Exchange sits above both with materially higher listing standards.

Should I hold penny stocks in a TFSA?

Usually not, for a reason many people miss. A loss inside a TFSA cannot be claimed against capital gains and the contribution room it occupied never comes back. A loss in a non-registered account produces a usable capital loss. Given the failure rate set out above, the permanent room destruction usually outweighs the value of sheltering a gain that may not arrive.

What sectors do most Canadian penny stocks come from?

Mining and metals is by far the largest, which reflects what the TSX Venture Exchange was built for. After that: energy and critical minerals including lithium, crypto and digital infrastructure, cannabis, and healthcare and life sciences. Technology is thin at this price level because the Canadian software companies that worked re-rated out of it.

Which Canadian penny stock actually makes money?

On the ten ranked here, four generated positive free cash flow or positive earnings in their most recent reported quarter: WELL Health, Integra Resources, High Tide and BTB REIT. HIVE reported positive adjusted EBITDA of $13.4 million USD against a large non-cash GAAP loss. Standard Lithium, Cardiol and Li-FT are pre-revenue by design, and DMG Blockchain reported revenue down 45% year over year with a widening loss.

What is the biggest risk with Canadian penny stocks?

Liquidity, and it is not close. Dilution destroys value slowly and visibly in the filings, where a careful reader can see it coming. Illiquidity destroys value suddenly and invisibly, at the moment you try to sell. A stock that trades $40,000 a day has no orderly exit for a position of any size, and the quoted price on your screen is not a price you can transact at.

How much of my portfolio should be in penny stocks?

A percentage you could lose entirely without changing any financial plan you have. For most people that is somewhere between 2% and 10%, spread across several names rather than concentrated in one, and capped on each holding at roughly a tenth of that stock’s average daily dollar volume.

Do any Canadian penny stocks pay a dividend?

One on this list does. BTB REIT distributes 7.5 cents a unit each quarter, which is 30 cents a year against a unit price of $3.63, a yield of roughly 8.3%. Its second-quarter adjusted funds from operations were 9.8 cents a unit, giving an AFFO payout ratio of 76.5%, so the distribution was covered. Distribution-paying securities at this price level are rare and each one deserves a payout-ratio check rather than a yield-first read.

The Short Version

The useful question about Canadian penny stocks is not which one goes up the most. It is which ones can fund themselves long enough to find out, and which ones you can actually sell.

On that test, the answers look unusual. The top of this list is a healthcare company guiding to $1.6 billion of revenue, a bitcoin miner with a $110 million USD contracted artificial intelligence business, a gold producer earning $12.0 million USD in a quarter, a cannabis retailer generating free cash flow, and a REIT paying a covered 8.3% distribution. None of that matches the mental image of a penny stock, and that mismatch is the point. Under $5 is a fact about the share count, not about the company.

Further down, the list looks more like what people expect, and the filings say so plainly: cash falling 86% in nine months at Organigram, a 39% rise in the share count at Cardiol, revenue halving at DMG, and a lithium explorer that funded a year of work by selling $48 million of stock.

Both halves are on the page because both are true, and because the previous version of this list is the strongest argument for reading the filings. Of its ten names, two no longer trade, one went private at four cents, and one is now a company you cannot get out of. The survivors were the ones with revenue or cash.

Size the position for that, use limit orders, check the share count against last year, and treat every number on this page as the starting point for your own reading of the filings rather than the end of it.

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Disclaimer: The content on bestcanadianstocks.ca is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions. Share prices, moving averages, market values and average daily volumes are from Yahoo Finance and reflect the September 11, 2026 close. Every company financial figure is taken from that company’s own filing, named in the text. Moving-average crossover statistics are computed by bestcanadianstocks.ca from daily closing prices. Questrade® is a registered trademark and/or service mark of Questrade, Inc.