Plus: a Q+A with Toronto’s gold guru October 14, 2025 Sign Up | View online IN THIS ISSUE 7 min read 🌲 Canada’s tree-conomy 💻 AI’s spending circle 💰 Gold’s banner year You might know Russell Oliver as the Cashman, but he’s really the gold guru. Read on for his take on what it’s like to be in the gold business right now. | Russell Oliver THE WEEK IN MARKETS ‘The largest liquidation event in crypto history’ Call it a flash crash, call it TACO time, call it a brief hiccup, call it whatever you want — as long as you call what happened over the holiday weekend the new normal. The market’s long rally stalled on Friday morning as investors got nervous about a renewal in China-U.S. trade tensions following China’s fresh curbs on rare metal exports, then at around 5 p.m. ET, the bottom fell out on anything still trading when U.S. President Donald Trump announced a retaliatory 100% tariff in a post on Truth Social. The S&P dropped 2.7%, the NASDAQ sank 3.6%, Bitcoin plunged 10%, and several major alt coins (Solana, XRP) lost even more — a “white knuckle moment” for traders that wiped out US$19 billion in crypto bets in under 24 hours. CoinGlass labelled it “the largest liquidation event in crypto history.” Then everyone fixed themselves a cocktail, settled down over the weekend, walked back their tough talk, and by early Monday, the markets had already regained half their losses. These brief but violent pullbacks are causing big losses for anyone trading with borrowed money (on margin, via futures, with options) and lots of sleepless nights … and then they vanish just as quickly. With all the leverage built into markets, don’t be surprised when it happens again. THE CHART OF THE WEEK WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK IMPORTANT Time is a flat circle. So is AI investment. In recent weeks, OpenAI has inked multibillion-dollar deals to purchase chips from both AMD and Nvidia, and in exchange, Nvidia is investing in OpenAI and AMD is forking over a company stake. Critics worry the spending spree is getting alarmingly circular — just a bunch of juggernauts handing money back and forth — but market optimists see rational exuberance for the companies that will dominate our future. Ottawa seems to be weighing whether to jump in: last week, government officials met with OpenAI executives to discuss how an American AI company can help with Canada’s push for digital sovereignty (from America). Scientists take a big step toward universal organ donation. Researchers at UBC announced last week that they’d successfully converted the blood type of a human kidney so it wouldn’t be rejected after transplant. More than 4,000 Canadians are waiting for organ donations, and last year, 31% of patients on the wait list died. Long waits can also lead to massive costs for patients and care providers (one year on dialysis can cost $60,000), and among the biggest drivers of wait times is the need to find a matching blood type. Avivo Biomedical is about to test UBC’s method in clinical trials; if it passes, we might all be universal donors someday soon. INTERESTING No, Canada doesn’t have a “death tax.” Perhaps you saw that viral CTV headline about the daughter whose savings got wiped out by a $660,000 tax bill following the death of her parents? Well, personal-finance writer Robb Engen unpacked the much less awful full story: in short, she inherited $715,000 in RRSPs, plus a cottage whose value had appreciated to at least $1.28 million since her parents purchased it. After they died, taxes would be due on both RRSP withdrawals and second properties, but once she paid the taxes on both assets, she’d still be left with more than $1 million in inherited property. That doesn’t make her tax bill any less real, though, so Engen has some advice for retirees who want to insulate their loved ones from a similar fate: withdraw a bit more each year from your RRIF and use the excess to top off your TFSA, which your beneficiaries won’t have to pay taxes on when they cash it out. —Sarah Rieger FROM OUR SPONSOR THE FOMO INDEX by Stacey Woods IMPORTANT 🧑‍⚖️ Supreme Court of Canada ditch their classic Santa robes. Will only wear them to review lower-court decisions on who’s been naughty or nice. Source 🎨 Bob Ross paintings will be auctioned off to benefit U.S. public TV stations, because, unfortunately, money doesn’t grow on happy little trees. Source 🚘 New Lyft feature tells drivers if potential passengers tip. If they want to chauffeur around a bunch of ingrates, they’ll have kids. Source 🐔 Japanese company creates a drone-laser system to protect chickens, and, no, it’s not called “The Iron Coop.” Source CRASH & BURN TO THE MOON 🏆 Nobel committee unable to reach a prize winner who’s “off the grid” and “living his best life.” His plants would like a word with him as well. Source 🏫 B.C. kindergarten teacher reprimanded for vaping in school bathroom. Told to leave it at home or bring enough for everyone. Source 🎶 Rush announces first tour in 10 years. Might be your only chance to catch them before 2112. Source 📺 California bans loud commercials on streamers. There’s nothing worse than jolting awake from Hollywood true crime into the nightmare of California. Source WHO CARES THE BIG IMPORTANT STORY I’M SMELTING! The Front Lines of the Gold Rush Everybody’s favourite pinky-ring metal has been on a very long, very lucrative tear, and if you’re a gold investor, you’re probably thrilled. But what if your life is dedicated to buying and selling gold? Is this the craziest moment, like, ever? To find out, we talked to Toronto’s most famous gold reseller, Russell Oliver, founder of the pawnshop chain Oliver’s Jewellery. If you’ve turned on a TV in the GTA over the last 30 years, you’ve seen the kitschy ads featuring him in his spandex Superman-knockoff costume, aka Cashman — he’s got the most recognizable “Oh yeah!” since “Macho Man” Randy Savage. Here’s what he had to say about how the gold boom is playing out on the streets. How have these prices affected your business? People are selling a lot of jewelry at our pawnshops, but the amount of bars coming in has increased unbelievably. Bars?! Yeah. It’s not unusual to have someone come in with 100 ounces. Where is all this gold coming from? A lot of people bought a long time ago, back when the price was holding relatively steady around $1,000 to $1,500 an ounce. In the old days, we’d get the odd person who’d come in with 80 or 90 bars. But now? There are so many people with so much gold. We even have people sending us stuff. During the virus, I started sending boxes to people who didn’t want to go out. We said, “Put your gold, diamonds, bags, whatever into this box. Courier it to us at no charge, and we’ll phone you for a deal.” We’ve gotten some expensive items that you won’t believe people put in the box. Do price fluctuations affect business? If the price goes down a little bit, fewer people might come in. But if it drops by more than, say, 10% to 15%, sometimes we get busier because people want to sell before the price goes down even more. If things go up, it’s good news because it means we’re getting more and more for our gold, but it doesn’t really drive traffic. What do you do with the gold after you buy it? Ontario law says we have to hold it for 18 days in case it’s stolen. We haven’t run into that much, but in the early days, it happened all the time. Once that’s passed, we’ll sell some of the gold to private customers. We can get $10, $20, or $50 per ounce above the spot price. But usually we just sell to a refiner that we’ve been working with for 35 years. If it’s gold bricks, he takes $10 per ounce, some tiny amount. For scrap he takes 2%, which also is so small. Do you hold on to any of the gold as an investment? No. No. I never have. Well, once. In the 1980s, gold went up fast — to $800. I figured it’d go up to $1,000 or $1,500. But as soon as I bought, maybe a couple of days later, it just started dropping. I lost the whole investment: $50,000. So now, other than what we hold for customers, I always liquidate. Every week. What do you mean by “hold for customers”? We do some loans against what clients bring in. We can give them 70%, so if you have $4,500 in gold, we’ll give you $3,000. The interest rate is 35% per year. And by law we have to hold it for a year — even if they come back with the money a week later. Do people ask for your predictions on gold prices? All the time. But the truth, of course, is I have no idea. I usually make something up. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. OTHER VERY GOOD READS 🥊 What “The Rock” Knows About Pain Dwayne Johnson faces his fears in a new performance. | The New York Times 🏠 Pathological Lawyer Inside a dramatic tale of Toronto real estate fraud. | Toronto Life 💪 The No-BS Guide to Entrepreneurial Resilience How Canada’s businesses are thriving in tough times. | The Globe and Mail 🛢️ The Standard Oil Story Did Rockefeller act like a tech CEO? | Austin Vernon THE WISDOM OF SOCIAL THAAAAA Aaron Judge costumes are 50% off! THOUGHTS ON TODAY’S ISSUE? Love it Good So so This week’s newsletter contributors: 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 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. 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