Plus: Why Ed Zitron hates AI July 14, 2025 Sign Up | View online IN THIS ISSUE 8 min read 🏦 Suspicious sales 🥇 Molten metals 🤖 AI anxiety The secret to the TSX’s 2025 hot streak? Precious metals. | Miramax 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, from the global economy to your own personal finances. 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 The $4 Trillion Club’s charter member You already know that Nvidia became the world's first US$4 trillion company last week, but let’s pause again and make sure we all fully absorb that number. Consider: if every Canadian joined up and pooled all of our holdings in public stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs, and then we converted it to U.S. dollars, we'd have just enough to buy Nvidia. How on Earth does a single company get so valuable? How about a non-Earth metaphor? Because the Dune memes keep getting more apt: Jensen Huang's company has a near-monopoly on a key ingredient to our future destiny, only its microchips for AI and not spice for space travel, and so all the Harkonnens and Atreideses of Big Tech — Google, Meta, OpenAI — are willing to risk spending themselves into oblivion over it. They're investing so much in AI that the U.S. markets are all but ignoring U.S. President Donald Trump's still-very-much-ongoing trade war. So is the TSX, but that’s because (see below) we’ve got some soaring spice markets of our own. THE CHART OF THE WEEK WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK IMPORTANT A sweeping review of the Big Five banks proves what we all sorta knew: yes, your bank cares more about its sales targets than your account balance. Following a CBC investigation into sales practices at Canada’s Big Five banks, the Ontario Securities Commission teamed up with federal regulators to conduct an exhaustive review of more than 2,800 mutual fund dealers. The results were both sobering and unsurprising: 54% reported feeling pressure from bosses to prioritize sales over quality advice, 23% admitted recommending products or services that weren’t in clients’ best interests, and 23% couldn’t even explain the standard fees they charge. Meanwhile, Canada’s investment fees remain among the world’s highest. No wonder independent advice-only planners are surging in popularity. Ozempic demand is driving Canada’s telehealth boom. Hims & Hers, the biggest distributor of generic Ozempic in the U.S., announced last week that it will expand into Canada and provide generic prescriptions once drugmaker Novo Nordisk’s patent here expires next year. Most Americans get their Ozempic prescriptions through private telehealth providers, and since Hims began selling weight-loss drugs in 2020, sales have multiplied an Nvidia-esque 10x. Ozempic isn’t approved for weight loss in Canada yet, just diabetes management, but it still seems to be luring customers away from primary care physicians and toward for-profit prescribers. One telehealth company, Livewell, previously ran ads promoting a Toronto Star investigation which alleged it prescribed the drug without any medical reason. INTERESTING Metals are molten hot this year. The TSX’s robust S&P-topping performance so far in 2025 has been powered by its “Materials Sector,” which spans industries like metals and mining, accounts for about 12% of the exchange’s roster, and includes four of the year’s five biggest movers. We called up Bloomberg senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone for a TLDR primer on the metal market: Gold (+37% YTD): “The key thing” about gold’s banner year, McGlone says, is that “central banks are buying it instead of the U.S. dollar,” and any perceived weakness in the U.S. stock market could continue the trend. Gold’s strength has drawn more investor attention to the sector, in turn boosting platinum and silver as well. Silver (+17% YTD): McGlone says silver is often called “the devil’s metal” because of its volatility. This price surge, though, is built on sturdier stuff, like industrial demand and green tech, as opposed to, say, fancy jewelry, which is why some speculators prefer it right now to big brother. Copper (+23% YTD): Following U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement that copper will face 50% tariffs, its price in the U.S. spiked relative to the rest of the world — the “widest disparity ever,” McGlone says. Spiking copper prices used to be a sign of economic growth. This time? McGlone believes it’s more akin to 2008’s spike in oil prices, which turned out to be a harbinger of soaring business costs. “It’s only going to hurt corporate profits.” —Sarah Rieger FROM OUR SPONSOR THE FOMO INDEX by Stacey Woods IMPORTANT 🇰🇵 North Korea opens luxury beach resort. Guests can hit the empty buffet before a relaxing day of forced tanning and snorkelling reeducation. Source 🤖 Canadian man used ChatGPT to lie about creating an AI band on Spotify. You can read all about it in Grok’s memoir. Source 🌇 Rents in Canada have fallen for the ninth straight month. Soon you’ll only have to share with one other family! Source 🍫 Purdys Chocolatier branches out to Save-On-Foods. One less stop to buy Canadian chocolate hedgehogs! Source CRASH & BURN TO THE MOON 💬 Microsoft Teams adds threaded conversations. Users excited to have another feature they can’t find. Source 🎤 Coldplay’s Chris Martin calls Toronto’s new Rogers Stadium “a weird stadium in the middle of nowhere.” Stadium calls him “boring and middle-of-the-road.” Source ✋ Goldman Sachs to make junior analysts swear a loyalty oath. They have to cross their hearts and spit on a quarterly report. Source 🌭 B.C. woman DoorDashes one A&W honey mustard sauce in her sleep. Now she can eat the corn-dog nuggets she ordered when she was high. Source WHO CARES THE BIG IMPORTANT STORY AI-NTAGONISTS Ed Zitron Really Hates AI Artificial intelligence — and, more specifically, generative AI, which creates things like code, country music, and passable bedtime stories — has recently dominated news and markets. But if you ask British tech critic Ed Zitron, who uses his podcast and newsletter to pummel tech heavyweights, in particular OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, it’s a $50 billion economy masquerading as a trillion-dollar one. We called him up to find out if he sees any potential amid the hype, and if there’s any tech out there that he does get excited about. —Claire Robbins You’ve been called one of AI’s biggest skeptics. Is that fair? I think people like to call me a cynic or a pessimist as a way of dismissing me. I actually love tech, but I’m a brokenhearted romantic about the practices of tech companies and how their promises are different from their actual outcomes. We don’t have many people actually looking at the tangible outputs of generative artificial intelligence versus the hype. A lot of people would say GenAI is successful, though. I use ChatGPT for emails I’m too lazy to write, and my friends make workout programs using it. And we know people use large language models for coding. But are they actually good? ChatGPT creates things in the same way that, if I take all of these ingredients for a cake and throw them in a big bowl and just kind of mash them with my fist and put them in the oven at a random temperature, sometimes it’ll turn into a cake. It doesn’t mean that it’s good. People think it’s an epic dunk to be like, “Aha! I found a use case.” But why does everyone have to go, “Aha! I found one”? Why is it not more obvious? You’ve really come down hard on the valuations of many AI companies. Why is that? Everyone’s making the same thing for this kind of mediocre, specious boom. GenAI is so uniquely unprofitable and so uniquely unreliable that it doesn’t allow these companies to actually have the kind of revenue growth that matches their investment. I mean, OpenAI at $300 billion? It’s a company that burns billions of dollars with a commoditized product. What would a more accurate valuation be? The GenAI industry is maybe a $50 billion market pretending to be a trillion-dollar one. Do you think anything can reverse the situation? We’re three years into this wank. It’s what I call the rotcom bubble. In Canada, we have a federal AI minister, and this year the government announced a $2 billion package to help companies access and build data centres. Do you think that’s nearsighted? In general, I think it’s smart for any country to try to appeal to scientific talent and foster innovation. The problem is when you do that without really having any idea about what the outcomes might be, let alone whether any of it will make any money. If the push or “strategy” is just to build data centres, it’s not as though they’re big job drivers. They require a lot of specialized plumbing and heating and cooling labour to build them, but once they’re running, they don’t really need labour, right? There’s no real long-term economic benefit from them. Let’s end on a positive note. Is there a sector in tech that excites you right now? The innovations in gallium nitride, a semiconductor that allows for smaller batteries and plugs, are immediately and genuinely useful for consumers. Interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. OTHER VERY GOOD READS 📞 That Customer Service Call Was Dropped on Purpose Excessive wait times and procedures are all part of the “sludge.” | The Atlantic* 💉 Dr. Ozempic An interview with the Canadian scientist whose discovery created the drug. | Toronto Life 🌲 Out of the Shadows Tree planting offers an appealing lifestyle and paycheque. But there are risks. | The Narwhal *Article is paywalled, which, yeah, is kind of annoying. But we think good journalism is worth paying for. THE WISDOM OF SOCIAL Linda Yaccarino is out as CEO of X — but we’ll always have fond memories of her greatest PR hits. 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). Correction: In the original version of this week’s item about weight-loss drugs, we noted that the Canadian telehealth company Livewell appeared to be running online ads touting a Toronto Star investigation into its business practices; that investigation, first published in 2023, alleged the company was prescribing Ozempic without proper medical justification. After our item ran, Livewell contacted us with a few clarifications. The company says it had already taken down the ads at the Star’s request prior to our story’s publication. The company also disputes the Star’s reporting, stating that its medical providers treat patients and prescribe Ozempic in accordance with Obesity Canada guidelines and in compliance with all Canadian laws and regulations. Wealthsimple Media Inc. 80 Spadina Ave Suite 400 Toronto, ON, M5V 2J4 VIEW IN BROWSER PRIVACY POLICY UNSUBSCRIBE Crypto is offered by Wealthsimple Investments Inc. (WSII), a member of the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO). Crypto assets purchased and held in an account with Wealthsimple Crypto are not protected by the Canadian Investor Protection Fund, the Canadian Deposit Insurance Corporation or any other investor protection insurance scheme. You can learn more about the risks of crypto assets in our Crypto Product Risk Disclosure. You can find more information about WSII in our Relationship Disclosure. 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