Plus: France’s morbid housing fix August 11, 2025 Sign Up | View online IN THIS ISSUE 8 min read 🛢️ Pipeline performance 🛍️ Claire’s crash out 🏠 Mortgage murder? We’re pretty sure this is an artist’s rendering of Claire’s first customer. The company’s ear-piercing days might be coming to an end. | Johannes Vermeer Worried, perplexed, confused, or just bored? We want to hear from you! Send us a voice memo with your most pressing macro or micro money questions. You can leave a voicemail for us at 226-444-2833 or send a voice memo to tldrpodcast@wealthsimple.com. Thanks! Now, on to the newsletter. —The Editors THE WEEK IN MARKETS Shopify vs. the Canada market curse Congratulations are in order! Last week, Shopify surpassed the Royal Bank of Canada as the country’s most valuable company. RBC has only not been No. 1 a few times since its incorporation in 1869, and each time the new champ has almost immediately plunged in value. Past victims of the “Canada market curse” include drugmaker Valeant (now called Bausch), energy company Encana (now defunct), and BlackBerry (you know what happened there). How’d Shopify surge past RBC? By (1) flexing its muscle beyond North America and enticing large global companies onto the platform, and (2) capitalizing on robust business conditions that, per Bloomberg, helped more than 60% of Canadian companies beat expectations this earnings season. Canada’s earnings season wasn’t quite the bonanza that we saw with the mega-cap behemoths down south, where AI spending propelled more than 80% of companies to better-than-expected results. Still, the business tailwinds are global. Will that help Shopify kill off the Canada market curse for good? Check back in six months. THE CHART OF THE WEEK WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK IMPORTANT Big tech has found a way around “right to repair” laws. The growing movement is designed to protect consumers’ ability to fix their damaged devices (versus buying pricey new replacements), and after right-to-repair laws gained traction in the U.S. and EU, Quebec’s version is slated to take effect this fall. Trouble is, companies like Apple have found out how to skirt the rules by making replacement parts prohibitively expensive — by charging, say, $250 for a $20 piece of plastic. The average household would save more than $300 each year if they could fix devices instead of having to replace them, which is why companies are so keen to convince you that you’re no handyman. Carney wants your future house built with Canadian wood. Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced $1.2 billion in support for Canada’s struggling softwood-lumber industry — a prime target of U.S. tariffs long before Trump turned up the dials. If the U.S. prevails, all those millions of houses we need to build over the next decade could get mighty expensive. INTERESTING Claire’s — which, yes, is still open — might have to close. The mall staple, which claims to have pierced 110 million ears worldwide — perhaps including yours, several of your cousins’, and maybe even your mom’s — just filed for creditor protection in Canada, following its second bankruptcy filing in the U.S. Founded in 1961, Claire’s had a US$500 million lifeline loan coming due, and with tweens now buying bracelets on TikTok Shop or Temu, well, there’s only so much money to be made puncturing holes through loose flesh. Parisian roulette? Inside France’s morbid housing-crunch solution. As in Canada, one reason France’s home prices are so high is that seniors aren’t downsizing — they’re staying put longer, which means fewer homes are being sold to young families. CNN dug into France’s novel solution: a system called viager occupé, whereby a senior sells their home at a discount (often as high as 50%), but they retain the right to live there until death. Win-win, right? Seniors get retirement cash; young buyers get a bargain dream home. But what if the senior proves to be unexpectedly spry? One 60-year-old buyer allegedly got sick of waiting on the deal he’d signed when he was 35 and may have had a hand in the homeowner’s death. —Sarah Rieger FROM OUR SPONSOR THE FOMO INDEX by Stacey Woods IMPORTANT 💰 Social-media startup “twocents” makes your username your bank balance. Worth joining just to watch the CEO’s number go down. Source 💻 Canadians advised to update their Dell computers amid security concerns. Main concern is no insecurity about having a Dell. Source 🍫 Candymaker Mars partners with biotech firm to create hardier cocoa plants. Or at least make them look 10 years younger. Source 🎤 New Chappell Roan song teases move to Saskatchewan. Let’s hope some of those corsets are insulated. Source CRASH & BURN TO THE MOON 💍 Couple sells basic and VIP tickets to their wedding. Either way, save some money to spend on merch. Source ☠️ Report finds Titan sub implosion was caused by a “toxic workplace environment.” There was a real lack of death-life balance. Source 🙏 China says it will conduct a search for the next Dalai Lama. Send submissions to Tibet’s Next Meek, Compliant Figurehead. Source 👄 New trend alert: adult pacifiers. Now you don’t have to pretend to like raves. Source WHO CARES THE BIG IMPORTANT STORY EXISTENTIALISM Canada Might Have Far Bigger Worries Than Tariffs With all the recent economic confusion, the world is getting whiplashed. Tariffs are back, then gone, then maybe back again. Inflation was gone, but then maybe not? To get some perspective — and some idea of what it all means for Canada — we talked to Mark Blyth, an econ professor at Brown University and a co-author of the new book Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers. Blyth is a political economist, so heads up: he gets a little political. And, though we don’t endorse any viewpoint, we do like hearing takes from smart people. Is inflation the biggest economic story of the past five years? Yes and no. It’s the biggest story if you thought that inflation would never return, that we were still in that decade after the financial crisis when money was so cheap that it was effectively a negative real rate. Is inflation part of the landscape now? Yes, but for reasons that are different from the story we told ourselves in the 1970s about government spending and money. It’s mainly supply shocks that have driven inflation recently. You realize how embedded you are in global supply chains when suddenly they stop working. Do you think there’s a bigger story? I think the really big one is the massive concentration of investment in AI. To me, this smells very much like 2010 and Big Data, which was going to automate 60% of jobs by 2020. Then we got to 2020 and … nothing happened. We reinvented it all again as AI and are pumping more money into it. What about tariffs? What do you make of that situation? We are at a moment whereby an entire regime and a way of doing things — independent central banks, global markets, free-trade agreements, all that good stuff — is ending. That’s a very intense take. Why is this regime changing? It’s the coalition around Trump, which has this [goal] of reindustrialization. They want to rebuild the U.S. economy of the 1950s through reshoring and very high tariffs in order to protect the white working class and encourage more investment from domestic firms, thereby increasing productivity and paying high wages. Let’s assume you’re right. What would that plan mean for Canada? For me, Canada’s problem is not tariffs but this actually-we-want-to-incorporate-you-into-the-U.S. problem. There’s a kind of hemispheric approach here, which is, “We’re going to retreat from global power, but this is ours. We’re going to run a heavy, carbon-based economy from Greenland down to Chile, and we are going to be the emperor, and we’re going to tell everybody else what to do.” What might that look like? You already see it in General Motors paying $300 million to move some parts across the Canadian border. If tariffs go higher — to 50% or 60% — you’re going to relocate the supply chain. Windsor, Ontario, would be done at that point, in my view. Could Trump back down, TACO-style? Who knows if it’s really going to be a thing or not, right? There is a belief in the administration that this is not only good for revenue, but it’s actually a serious part of their reindustrialization project. If this Republican government survives the midterms next year, I have no doubt that they will begin to apply that pressure. This interview was edited for length and clarity. For more from Blyth, check out last Wednesday’s TLDR podcast. OTHER VERY GOOD READS 🏀 The Agony and Ecstasy of Being a Trickshot Star How pool-hall tricks and spinning cheeseburgers became a lucrative genre. | The Guardian 💎 Whiteouts and Wolverines What it’s like to work at a diamond mine up north. | The Walrus 💰 Doctor Strange The curious life of Elon Musk’s Canadian grandpa. | Toronto Life THE WISDOM OF SOCIAL European work culture, Vancouver-style: bringing your laptop to the patio on the only sunny day. 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), Ciara Rickard (copy editor), 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 Match Bonus: From August 6 to September 5, 2025, any new or existing Wealthsimple account user who registers for the promotion then initiates an institutional transfer of an existing account from a qualifying third party to a Wealthsimple Self-directed Investing, Managed Investing, Crypto, or Corporate account within 30 days of registration will receive a 1% cash bonus on the cumulative transferred amount (less withdrawal and/or transferred debit balance) of at least $25,000 during the promotion period, up to a maximum of $2,000,000 transferred amount. A 2% cash bonus will be applied if the eligible transfer is an eligible Margin account with a current debit balance of at least $10,000. Maximum one (1) cash bonus per client, to be applied in the span of twelve (12) months. Minimum fund holding period required. Full eligibility and T&Cs at wsim.co/summer-margin-match. 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. TLDR is not a research report and should not serve as the basis for making investment decisions. Wealthsimple Media Inc. does not endorse any third-party views referenced in this content. When you invest, your money is at risk and it is possible that you may lose some or all of your investment. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Historical returns, hypothetical returns, expected returns and images included in this content are for illustrative purposes only. Always research before investing. © 2025 Wealthsimple Media Inc.