Plus: why do we care about commodities all of a sudden? May 23, 2022 Made in Canada IN THIS ISSUE 😲 Blackberry is actually making money ⚽ Equal pay comes to soccer 🐄 Dairy wars WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK Jeff Pachoud/Getty Images | The U.S. women’s soccer team will receive equal pay and prize money as the men’s team. IMPORTANT In this week’s obligatory housing market news: Canada’s home prices got ever-so-slightly less face-melting in April, dropping by 0.6% since March. While that’s not a huge change, remember that higher interest rates are a little like allergy medicine, and we all might be sneezing a little bit before the effects kick in. Is this the first sign of what’s to come? Want to quantify how low tech valuations have sunk since the fall 2021 glory days? By one estimate, Salesforce, Slack, and the other public software-as-a-service companies have lost more than $1 trillion in value and are now trading at less than they were before the pandemic. Just another wilted feather in this cap of sadness. Speaking of turns of fortune, Waterloo-based Blackberry Limited, which switched from phones to enterprise software, is now projecting to double revenue in the next 5 years, eventually surpassing $1.5 billion. That’s not quite the $600B Apple expects to pull in this year, but it’s still better than what Palm is doing. INTERESTING Remember how the U.S. women’s soccer team got paid so much less than the men’s team, even though the men’s team never wins anything? Not anymore, thanks to a finally-fair new deal with the U.S. Soccer Federation. The women’s team will now get the same pay and prize money as the men’s — about $450,000 on average each season, plus bonuses during the World Cup. Canada and the U.S. are basically re-fighting the War of 1812, except this time it’s over… milk. And Ottawa’s latest compromise is far from a ceasefire. The new rules impose massive (like, over 200%) tariffs on foreign dairy, poultry, and egg imports. While an international dispute resolution panel says that system violated New NAFTA, Canada says it just wants to make sure local farmers are paid fairly. The week in markets (in emoji) 🎈 🏢 👴🏻 ✋ 📉 🐻 💻 🛍️ 😬 👾 ♭ ☀️ 🛢️ 📈 🇨🇦 ✨ *In another bad week for securities, inflation began to hit corporate margins and Powell reminded everyone he was serious about stopping it. The S&P dropped again and is now flirting with an “official” bear market. Tech continued getting shellacked, and retail hopped on for the ride. Crypto had a brief reprieve, with Bitcoin and ETH staying relatively flat around $30k and $2K. The one bright spot? The TSX held up as oil producers continued to outperform. Let’s goooo Canada. THE FOMO INDEX IMPORTANT 📈 Canada’s inflation rises to 6.8% — a (new) 31-year high. Sigh. Source 🐎 Insider reports Elon Musk sexually propositioned a flight attendant and offered her a horse. She said “nay.” Source 🍔 Ronald out, Uncle Vanya in: all holdings in Russia will be “de-arched,” announces McDonald’s. Source 💳 A new tap-to-pay credit card works on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, available in nearly 30 stores… worldwide. Source CRASH & BURN TO THE MOON 🍁 The Leafs end their NHL record 55th straight year without the Stanley Cup. At least they’re consistent. Source 😬 Securities fraudster Martin Shkreli and his smirk are released from federal prison two years early. Source 💎 Uncut Gems IRL: Drake wins $2.6M in a three-leg parlay bet, lives to enjoy it. Source 🎨 A Maud Lewis painting that was once traded for a grilled cheese sells for $350K. Source WHO CARES WHAT’S UP THIS WEEK THURSDAY May 26 Canada’s Big Five Banks are expected to tell us that they’re still making plenty of dough this week. That could be good news for more than just the annual bonuses of finance bros, since some experts predict that all that bank money will lead to a “dividend bonanza,” which sure sounds fun. FRIDAY May 27 This week, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business will release its snapshot of small businesses, which employ a surprising 70% of all Canadians. It’ll be a big indicator of their stress levels, which will hopefully do a little bit to ease everyone else’s. THE BIG IMPORTANT STORY COMMODITIES Why does everyone care about commodities all of a sudden? Even with markets resembling those huge multi-humped slides at summer fairs, where the thrill is minimized by the friction burn you have to fight on the way down, one kind of investment is headed in the opposite direction: commodities. What is a commodity anyway? A raw material or physical good used to make something else — like lumber for your deck, oil for the gas in your car, pigs for bacon, etc. Why are they going up right now? A too-familiar combination of worker shortages, shipping challenges, and fearful hoarding during the pandemic, plus Putin’s goose-stepping into Ukraine. As the supply of raw materials has gone down, prices for them — and for the goods that require them — have soared. Why do people buy them? Apart from being fun to talk loudly about in a bar (“You’re in what? Salmon futures?”), commodities tend to move independently of stocks and bonds, so they’re often used to diversify. They can also protect against inflation: when prices go up at the grocery store, commodity prices go up, too. How do people buy them? Markets like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange let you buy futures contracts, which means you agree to buy something for a certain price at a certain time. But if you don’t know what you’re doing, you could end up losing a bunch of money — or having 5,000 pounds of cow dropped off in your garden. The easier way is to buy shares in companies that mine, refine, or farm commodities, or ETFs that track commodity prices. Can that really happen with the cows? Yes, but it’s rare. Futures contracts can be physically- or cash-settled. Physical settlement is the one with the livestock truck, but many exchanges won’t allow it and most people cash-settle: when the contract ends, whoever owes money pays it before bailing or rolling over into a new one. No manure shoveling required. — Jacqueline Detwiler TOTALLY NONESSENTIAL GOOD READS 🌝 How a Trash-Talking Crypto Bro Caused a $40 Billion Crash The South Korean entrepreneur behind the Luna collapse | The New York Times 🤖 I Had a Passionate Love Affair with a Robot Finding romance with an A.I. | Dazed 💅 Makeup and Money: The Persuasive Pull of Beauty Influencers How authenticity became currency | The Walrus THE WISDOM OF TWITTER Can someone turn the faucet back on, please? THOUGHTS ON TODAY’S ISSUE? 🤑 Love it 🙂 Good 🙁 So so This week’s newsletter contributors: Brennan Doherty (writer), Jared Lindzon (writer), Devin Gordon (writer), Jacqueline Detwiler (writer), Sarah Rieger (news writer), Rusty Foster (editor), Peter Martin (senior editor), and Kat Angus (managing editor). Wealthsimple Media Inc. 80 Spadina Ave Suite 400 Toronto, ON, M5V 2J4 Replies to this email address are not monitored. Have questions? Visit our Help Centre or submit a request to our Client Support team. VIEW IN BROWSER PRIVACY POLICY UNSUBSCRIBE TLDR is offered by Wealthsimple Media Inc. and is for informational purposes only. Any views expressed are those of the individual author and/or of Wealthsimple Media Inc., not of Wealthsimple Financial Corp or any of its other subsidiaries or affiliates. The content in TLDR is not investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell assets or securities, nor any other kind of professional advice. 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