Canadian investors can broaden their portfolios and enhance their returns by looking beyond domestic equities and adding exposure to U.S.-listed companies. Combining Canadian and U.S. stocks gives investors access to a much wider selection of businesses, particularly in industries with a smaller presence in Canada.
The U.S. market is home to many of the world’s largest companies across sectors such as technology, healthcare, communications, and consumer goods. As a result, investing in U.S. equities can complement a Canadian-focused portfolio by adding exposure to industries and businesses that may be underrepresented on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
A portfolio that combines Canadian and U.S. equities can also provide exposure to different economic and structural growth drivers. Bird Construction (TSX: BDT), for instance, offers exposure to infrastructure development in Canada, while Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) provides direct exposure to the expanding artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced-computing ecosystem. The two businesses therefore represent distinctly different investment themes.
Bird Construction offers infrastructure exposure
Bird Construction has been one of the strongest-performing stocks on the TSX in recent years. Its shares have risen more than 184% over the past year and about 787% over three years. The company is benefitting from its exposure to several high-growth end markets.
The company participates in data centres, nuclear and renewable power, defence, Arctic and remote-region projects, oil and gas, LNG, chemicals, utilities, electricity transmission and distribution, mining and critical minerals, transportation infrastructure, and social infrastructure.
This diversification is strategically important because it reduces dependence on any individual sector, customer, or contract category. It also gives Bird access to multiple areas where infrastructure spending could remain an important long-term source of demand.
Its backlog indicates solid growth ahead. A considerable portion of its backlog consists of lower-risk collaborative contract structures, while margins have improved from the same period a year earlier. Together with a healthy pipeline of potential projects, these factors provide a foundation for continued revenue and profitability growth.
Importantly, demand remains broad across Bird’s strategic markets. Structural trends support many of these areas and can generate opportunities over extended periods.
Nvidia is the AI leader
Nvidia offers a very different growth profile to Canadian investors. Strong demand for its AI chips has positioned the company to benefit from continued investment in AI infrastructure, with earnings expected to keep expanding rapidly over the medium term.
The company’s top line more than doubled in the most recent quarter despite a tough year-over-year comparison. This shows the scale of current demand. Its data centre segment remains the key growth driver with continued interest in the Blackwell platform.
Looking further ahead, the rollout of the Vera Rubin platform represents another solid growth catalyst. Nvidia’s opportunity also extends beyond GPUs. Its networking business is an important part of the broader AI infrastructure market, while increasing adoption of agentic AI could expand demand for data centre CPUs.
Accessing U.S. stocks
Canadian investors can purchase U.S. equities through online brokerages offering access to U.S. securities. Before investing, however, investors should review their brokerage’s available securities, foreign-exchange costs, commissions, and account-specific restrictions.
The bottom line
Ultimately, holding Canadian and U.S. stocks together can give investors a broader mix of growth drivers and reduce reliance on a single market or sector. Bird Construction provides exposure to Canada’s infrastructure investment cycle, while Nvidia offers participation in the global expansion of AI and data centre spending. Although both stocks carry different risks and growth profiles, their contrasting sources of potential returns illustrate the value of geographic and sector diversification.
For Canadian investors, combining domestic opportunities with carefully selected U.S. equities can create a more balanced portfolio while expanding access to long-term growth themes.