Plus: pill-sized cybernetic brain implants September 15, 2025 Sign Up | View online IN THIS ISSUE 8 min read 🪙 Mineral mergers 🧮 Tariff arithmetic 🎞️ Closing credits The company that became synonymous with watching movies in bright, bold colours is no more. | Wealthsimple THE WEEK IN MARKETS Investors show their faith in Oracle New ATHs for the S&P 500 and the TSX, both of which were up about 1% for the week. But the big story last week was Oracle, which shot up more than 40% on Wednesday alone upon the news that it’d scored cloud contracts with OpenAI, Nvidia, and ByteDance’s TikTok. The rally added US$260 billion in shareholder value, including a cool $96 billion for Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison — the biggest one-day wealth increase in recorded history, enough to briefly (as in for a few hours) vault him past Elon Musk as the world’s wealthiest person. Like Nvidia before it, Oracle is booming because it makes picks and shovels for AI gold rushers, so if AI’s much-hyped profits materialize, history might view this as the moment Oracle became the next Nvidia. If not, then this will be one of history’s great false starts — right up there with Cisco. THE CHART OF THE WEEK WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK IMPORTANT Will Ottawa block a “blockbuster” U.K.-Canadian mineral merger? Teck, one of Canada’s mining giants, says its $70-billion deal to join forces with British company Anglo American is a “merger,” but it sure seems more like an Anglo takeover. Anglo is more than twice Teck’s size, and post-merger, it’ll end up with 62.4% of the company’s shares. The deal might raise eyebrows in Ottawa, which issued a directive last year that it would block deals exactly like this one in order to safeguard Canada’s supply of “critical minerals.” The feds also recently armed the Competition Bureau with broad new powers to address its rather toothless track record. Of course, a lot’s changed since then… Even America can’t keep its tariffs straight. A brief anecdote via the CBC captures the state of chaos around shipping to the States right now: a Canadian business owner got charged $66 in tariffs and then $555 in tariffs for two different shipments of the same $250 product. Canada Post, meanwhile, has updated its FAQ to warn shippers that even CUSMA-compliant goods — meaning they should be tariff-free — are still being haphazardly taxed. In possibly related news, parcel traffic to the U.S. dropped 81% the day the new shipping rules were implemented. INTERESTING It’s curtains for Technicolor. The credits have rolled on a century-old cinema giant. Technicolor — famed for developing the colourization process used in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz and countless other big-screen classics, then parlaying it into a postproduction empire — has been shuttered and liquidated, and its iconic name has been sold off. Bloomberg retraced Technicolor’s all-too-familiar missteps: too much growth, followed by too much debt. Its last co-production, Lilo & Stitch, is still in theatres, but if you’re looking for a proper tribute that captures why movie buffs are so blue, just watch this. Lifecording was a Black Mirror episode. Now it’s a VC magnet. Silicon Valley trendspotter Josh Wolfe told the “Odd Lots” podcast last week that he sees the rise of “lifecording” — recording yourself 24/7 with devices like Meta glasses or, say, a pill-sized cybernetic brain implant — as an “inevitability.” And indeed, Meta glasses sales have tripled since last year, while lifecorder data points keep popping up, from Wired’s review of a necklace that makes snarky comments about your daily interactions to people complaining on social media about getting videotaped by pickup artists, and possibly even by their bikini waxer. Would you believe the Black Mirror episode doesn’t end happily? —Sarah Rieger FROM OUR SPONSOR THE FOMO INDEX by Stacey Woods IMPORTANT 🌧️ August hailstorm left a scar across Alberta that’s visible from space. Moon says it actually makes us look kind of cool. Source 🌹 Donald Trump renames White House Rose Garden “The Rose Garden Club at the White House.” Ladies drink free at all treaty signings. Source 🤖 Companies are hiring humans to fix AI’s mistakes. You know what’s great for that? AI. Source 📱 Apple introduces convenient crossbody phone strap. Your phone will love the convenience of having you on a leash. Source CRASH & BURN TO THE MOON 🚦 Vandals cut down Toronto speed camera for seventh time in 10 months. Time to turn on the speed camera vandal camera. Source 🇸🇪 Sweden leaves ABBA out of newly announced cultural canon. Sweden, if you change your mind, they’re the first in line… Source 🚘 Tesla quietly admits its cars will never be fully self-driving. World quietly admits it never believed that to begin with. Source 🛣️ Man arrested for driving toy Barbie Jeep on a B.C. street. He feels really stupid — thought it was the Ken Beach Cruiser. Source WHO CARES THE BIG IMPORTANT STORY MAILBAG CPP! U.S. Stocks! Mortgage Rates!: We Answer Three of Your Biggest Money Questions Most weeks in this newsletter, we put out a call for your most pressing money questions. A lot of you reached out to us this summer — which we really appreciate! — and this week, we’re answering three questions that touch on topics that have come up in many of your messages. For insight, we spoke with some professional financial advisors and experts. Here’s what they told us: I plan to retire at age 60, and I’ve read conflicting opinions on when I should take CPP. I’ll have a company pension that may or may not be enough to get by. Should I take CPP at 60 or try to wait until 65? We can’t get too prescriptive, because we don’t know the particulars of your situation. That said, you will certainly receive more money from CPP each month the longer you wait to take it. One way to think about deferring CPP (and OAS) is that it’s like taking out longevity insurance. If you wait until 70 to start taking payouts and you live well into your 80s, well, your bet paid off in the form of higher monthly income, and there’s no age at which you stop being eligible. That said, if your only way to pay bills at 60 is to take CPP, most advisors would recommend doing that over racking up credit-card debt. If you have enough savings to defer CPP, a big thing to remember is that CPP (and OAS) payments are subject to tax. A lot of retirees begin by making RRSP withdrawals, which are also taxed, to cover expenses. Then when they do start collecting CPP, they supplement that income with money from a TFSA, because TFSA withdrawals aren’t taxable. The goal in all this is to keep one’s taxable income as low as possible. My RRSPs are mostly allocated to broad ETFs, like $VGRO, which means I’m invested heavily in the U.S., and that makes me sad. What’s a passive investor to do in these trying times? If you want your investments to align with your values, there are lots of ways to do that through Socially Responsible Investing, ESG, and halal funds, to name a few. If you don’t want to hold American equities, in particular, plenty of index funds exclude U.S. stocks. But a word of caution: Canadians tend to overinvest in Canadian stocks, and overconcentration in any market is risky, so keep that in mind if you reduce your U.S. holdings. Also, nearly any time you exclude an entire class of stocks from your portfolio, it reduces your expected return, especially if you’re excluding a country whose stock market makes up something like 70% of global equities. U.S. stocks have been a major source of global returns since 2008. That could change — or it could not. Why doesn’t the Bank of Canada set mortgage rates when it sets other interest rates? For help on this one, we called Rob McLister, editor of MortgageLogic and one of Canada’s top mortgage experts. “While the Bank of Canada doesn’t directly set mortgage rates, it has a big hand in them,” he explained. That’s because the BoC sets the target for the overnight rate — aka the rate banks use to lend one another money to meet capital requirements, etc. This overnight rate either raises or lowers the cost of borrowing, so banks take it into account whenever they lend money for mortgages, along with other economic factors, like loan demand and bond yields. And because banks need to make money, mortgage rates will almost always be higher than the overnight rate. “If the Bank of Canada dictated mortgage rates, it would break the link between rates and actual lending costs,” McLister said. “It would potentially kill competition, create funding imbalances, and distort risk-based lending.” Basically, the BoC doesn’t directly intervene in mortgage rates, so lenders can exercise discretion. —Ben Mathis-Lilley & Sarah Rieger OTHER VERY GOOD READS 🚚 The Messy Reality of Feeding Alaska The state’s supply chain relies on Canada. | High Country News 🧹 Why Tradwives Aren’t Trad Women actually worked throughout history. | Prospect 🏀 Board Man Gets Paid (For a No-Show Job) A fresh paper trail connects Kawhi to a Clips co-owner. | Pablo Torre Finds Out THE WISDOM OF SOCIAL FWIW, an AI chatbot (we won’t say which) just told us we’re Canada’s funniest newsletter. THOUGHTS ON TODAY’S ISSUE? Love it Good So so This week’s newsletter contributors: Ben Mathis-Lilley (writer), Devin Gordon (writer), Stacey Woods (writer), Sarah Rieger (news writer), Ambrose Martos (fact checker), Maude Campbell (copy editor), Sara Black McCulloch (fact checker), Mohini Tailor (lifecycle marketing manager), Eva Grace Clement Cruz (lifecycle marketing associate), Setareh Sarmadi (senior editorial producer), Matthew Karasz (markets editor), Jared Sullivan (senior editor), Peter Martin (senior editor), and Devin Friedman (editor-in-chief). Wealthsimple Media Inc. 80 Spadina Ave Suite 400 Toronto, ON, M5V 2J4 VIEW IN BROWSER PRIVACY POLICY UNSUBSCRIBE Mortgage brokerage services are offered by Pine Canada Financial Corporation. Data pulled as of September 10, 2025 High ratio insured mortgage rates shown. Rates shown are subject to qualification and apply to mortgages with less than 20% down payment, and up to 25 year amortization. Pine's annual percentage rate and the annual interest rate for these mortgages are the same, and the property valuation fee is waived. Rate may be changed at any time without notice. Client’s approved rate is subject to standard qualification of credit, income, and collateral. Mortgage Cashback Offer: New and existing Wealthsimple clients with a funded Wealthsimple account who applied and received a Pine mortgage approval through https://wealthsimple.pine.ca, and close the mortgage within 120 days of the approval can receive a cash bonus depending on (i) the actual mortgage amount, and (ii) the applicant or co-applicant’s total assets with Wealthsimple from the date the commitment letter for their Pine mortgage was issued and the mortgage closing date at 11:59PM ET, whichever is higher: Core client: $150-$1,000; Premium client: $500-$3,000; Generation client: $1,000-$5,000. Maximum 1 cash bonus per client. Must be residents of Canada (excl. QC). 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