Plus, how the NFL conquered the world January 26, 2026 Sign Up | View online In This Issue 8 min read 🎥 Affleck’s AI rant 🎤 Carney’s Davos mic drop 🏈 The NFL’s papal dreams Ben Affleck shared some smart thoughts about AI and the future of Hollywood — and the internet listened. | Paramount Pictures The Week in Markets Diversification away from the U.S.? Last week in this space we talked about the yearlong-and-counting silver rush — and after another strong trading week, it’s now up 40% on the year and just cracked the $100/oz barrier for the first time. But the market story of 2026 so far continues to be the gangbusters performance of precious metals across the board. Platinum is up 30% this month, while good ol’ gold is up 20%. Those would be strong annual returns, and it’s not even February. Explanations abound, but hedge-funder Ray Dalio shared a persuasive take at Davos: this rally isn’t really about precious metals — it’s a “diversification away from the U.S.” Traders are seeking safe harbours, and there just aren’t that many options more tried and true (and well-regulated) than precious metals. Dalio pointed out that U.S. stocks were up in 2025 and are up so far in 2026, but much less than other viable alternatives, including Canadian stocks. And it doesn’t hurt in this moment of peak Trump unpredictability that precious metals are primarily traded out of London. Jan. 19 – Jan. 23 TSX: +0.5% (+4% YTD) S&P 500: –0.7% (+0.8% YTD) The Chart of the Week What Happened Last Week Important Untethering from the U.S. ain’t going to be easy. Mark Carney became a “global political star” at Davos by urging other middle powers to join Canada in blazing a trail away from the world’s superpowers, i.e., the U.S. Tough talk feels good. But can Carney actually reduce our reliance on the U.S.? He’s giving it a go with his EV and canola deal with China, on top of smaller agreements with Malaysia, Singapore, the UAE, and Qatar. Partly as a result, exports to non-U.S. countries hit a record $21.5 billion in October. Not bad! The catch — and it’s a giant one — is that we export $500 billion to the U.S. annually, so Trump can still rattle us by threatening to put 100% tariffs on our goods, as he did over the weekend. The moral of the story: Canada’s path to economic independence could get bumpy. What’s all this commotion about Claude Code? Engineers have been freaking out for months about Anthropic’s AI coding tool, Claude Code, even going on so-called “Claude benders.” Last week, the wider business world caught on, hence all the memes. Unlike AI chatbots, which live in browser windows, Claude Code integrates into your computer’s terminal, giving it access to your files and apps (Slack, Sheets), which means, among other things, less copy/pasting between tabs. It also has agency and can act independently. One person built an app that automatically pays his parking tickets; another said she DIY’d an allergy tracker in the time it took her husband to get dinner. Interesting OK, AI can code. But its writing is still “shi**y,” says Ben Affleck. Look, we knew he was an Oscar-winning multi-hyphenate. Still, we didn’t expect him to deliver — on Rogan’s podcast, no less! — such an incisive (and widely shared) critique of AI. In less than three minutes, Affleck articulated why AI is lousy at writing (because “by its nature, it goes to the mean — it’s an average”) and how AI companies are incentivized to spook us into accepting its takeover as a fait accompli (a critique endorsed by big-shorter Michael Burry). Yet Affleck acknowledged AI’s utility for certain aspects of filmmaking, like visual effects. He sounded … sensible? How do ya like them apples? It’s not “noise,” Mom. It’s just how we feel. The Economist found that about 45% of songs in the Billboard top 100 pop charts have lyrics that involve angst, a 13% jump from 20 years ago. —Srivindhya Kolluru and Jared Sullivan From Our Sponsor The FOMO Index by Stacey Woods Important 🇨🇦 Poll finds only 17% of Americans want to annex Canada. Unfortunately, that number includes the guy with all the nuclear codes. Source 🇨🇭 Swiss assisted-suicide pod now uses AI to decide if it should kill you. Helpful for anyone who might wander in looking for a tan. Source 🔬 New info casts doubt on the prevalence of microplastics. That stuff in your testicles is probably just glitter. Source 🍺 Struggling Dos Equis brings back “The Most Interesting Man in the World.” He doesn’t often forgive beer companies, but when he does… Source Crash & Burn To the Moon 🐮 Cow stuns world by learning how to scratch her back with a broom. But she still needs YouTube to do a smoky eye. Source 🤓 Palantir CEO Alex Karp says humanities degrees will soon be useless. Soon? Source 💉 Ozempic resurrects the “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” guys for its own ads. “Stay working, my friends,” says World’s Most Interesting Man. Source 🦅 Man lures injured bald eagle out of B.C. dump with frozen lasagna. Lasagna company happy to learn its product tastes better than dead mice. Source Who Cares? The Big Important Story How the NFL Built Itself Into the Vatican of Pro Sports In 2013, New York Times reporter Ken Belson was approached by his editor with an idea: did he want to cover the National Football League on a full-time basis — not as a sport in the traditional sense but as a business story? Belson agreed, and more than a decade later, he poured everything he learned into a book, Every Day Is Sunday: How Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell Turned the NFL Into a Cultural & Economic Juggernaut. Over the decade-plus Belson spent reporting, the average NFL franchise more than tripled in value, from US$1.7 billion to around US$7.65 billion today. The audience, meanwhile, is bigger than ever; last year, a record 127.7 million viewers tuned in to the Super Bowl. With this year’s Super Bowl coming up on February 8, we talked with Belson about the league’s relationship with Canada and how the NFL just keeps growing. Let’s start with the Super Bowl. How did it become the giant spectacle it is today? The first Super Bowl, in 1967, was comically inept. The official game clock broke. NBC didn’t come back from commercial [break] and missed the second-half kickoff. But over time, it became a party — and a bucket-list destination. And not just with fans but also with corporate sponsors. Another reason the Super Bowl has grown is that the NFL has tried to expand its appeal to younger fans, women, and Hispanic fans, by, for example, having Bad Bunny play the halftime show this year. The book traces the growth of the NFL over the tenure of Roger Goodell, the commissioner since 2006. What’s his basic approach? He’s turned the NFL into a giant media company, into Hollywood. [See: NFL RedZone, its mega-successful seven-hour Sundays-only survey of league-wide action.] One of his associates told me Roger doesn’t really look at the NBA or MLB as competition; he wants the NFL to be seen in the same light as Disney or the Vatican. Disney, of course, is a family-friendly media conglomerate, and the Vatican is a cultural institution. That’s where Roger’s head is at. You write about the NFL’s eagerness to move into international markets but its hesitancy to actually do it. Is that the Canadian story? The Bills played a series of games in Toronto starting in 2008 at the Rogers Centre [home of the Blue Jays], but, frankly, the games were kind of panned. So the Bills backed off, and now they’re about to open a new stadium in Buffalo. [As far as expansion teams go], the owners love the number of teams right now, 32. They love the balance of 16 teams in each conference. Not to mention that every time you add a team, you dilute the equity of the existing owners [who share revenue from national TV contracts]. But you also write about the NFL not wanting to sit back and be happy with where they are. That’s very much their mantra. But they’ve realized that if you’re going to expand internationally, the cheapest way to do it is to sell the game on TV. That’s why you’ll see the Seahawks marketing their brand more in British Columbia. Will we at least get more games in Canada at some point? I think we’ll eventually see more games in Toronto, but the league has gotten more discriminating about what they demand from their host cities in terms of facilities. And I don’t know if the Rogers Centre is suited to host the NFL right now. This interview, conducted by Michael Weinreb, was edited for length and clarity. The Big Read 🇨🇳 23 Ways You’re Already Living in the Chinese Century* This immersive package from WIRED explores how China is charting the future of, well, everything: EVs and Labubus, of course, but also the space race, human-gene editing, AI boyfriends, humanoid robots, and companies that build 10-storey buildings in 29 hours. Unfortunately, that future also includes internet censorship and mass arbitrary detention, so there’s that. *Article is paywalled, which, yeah, is kind of annoying. But we think good journalism is worth paying for. Post of Wisdom Thoughts on Today’s Issue? Love it Good So so This week’s newsletter contributors: Brennan Doherty (writer), Devin Gordon (writer), Srivindhya Kolluru (news writer), Michael Weinreb (writer), Stacey Woods (writer), Ambrose Martos (fact checker), Ciara Rickard (copy editor), Maude Campbell (copy editor), Sara Black McCulloch (fact checker), Mohini Tailor (product engagement manager), Eva Grace Clement Cruz (product engagement associate), Setareh Sarmadi (senior editorial producer), Matthew Karasz (markets editor), Jared Sullivan (senior editor), Peter Martin (senior editor), and Devin Friedman (editor-in-chief). Correction: Last week we mistakenly said McDonald’s is thought to be the fifth largest landowner in the world. This is not the case, despite its significant holdings. We regret the error. TWIM: Total returns shown for Jan. 19 – Jan. 23 in local currency, via TradingView. Wealthsimple Media Inc. 80 Spadina Ave Suite 400 Toronto, ON, M5V 2J4 Have questions? Contact us. 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