Plus: Matty Matheson joins the TLDR podcast October 15, 2024 Sign Up | View online IN THIS ISSUE 8 min read 💔 Big-tech breakup? 📉 Tesla trader trouble 👨‍🍳 Matty Matheson’s money story Matty Matheson — chef, restaurateur, and everyone’s favourite Fak on The Bear — joined the TLDR podcast last week to talk about money. Read (or listen) below. | Aaron Wynia for Wealthsimple THE WEEK IN MARKETS Witching hour Isn’t Halloween the best? Investors get to knock on the door of every public company, and — trick or treat! — get a Q3 earnings report tossed into their pillowcases. The frights! The thrills! This particular earnings season will be a big test for U.S. and Canadian markets, both of which notched new record highs last week. Have investors been right to be so exuberant? Or are consumers starting to cut back? And what effect, if any, is China’s quicksand economy having on companies? The answers started rolling in last Friday as the big U.S. banks reported earnings. JP Morgan, the world’s biggest bank, led the way with a so-far-so-good report, but we’ll get a lot more answers over the coming three weeks as earnings season peaks. We’ve seen enough horror movies to know how fast a keg party can turn into a bloodbath, so cue the Halloween theme song and remember: this is supposed to be fun. THE WEEK IN ONE NUMBER US$3.1B The fines and penalties TD Bank will pay to settle charges in a U.S. court for its failure to stop money laundering by drug cartels using its services. WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK IMPORTANT Investors seem unfazed by the Google antitrust case. Newly proposed sanctions by the U.S. Department of Justice could, according to Google, wind up forcing it to no longer use its Chrome, Play, and Android businesses to promote Google search. And yet, as bad as that sounds, investors responded to the news with a shrug. Google shares have slipped by only 2.4% since the beginning of October. Why isn’t anyone spooked? Because no one knows when or if this breakup will happen. The Financial Times went as far as to call the DOJ’s plan “antitrust fan-fiction.” And even if a breakup does happen, it might not necessarily be bad news for investors: Standard Oil and AT&T shareholders did better post-split. The biggest threat to Google’s stock price likely isn’t the DOJ — it’s their rivals in the AI arms race. Getting beaten is worse than getting broken up. Money = happiness, confirmed. Instead of just trolling each other online like normal people do, two Ivy League social scientists who disagreed about the answer to an age-old question — “does money make people happier?” — joined forces, compared research, and published a paper about where they agree. (It’s called adversarial collaboration — give it a whirl next Thanksgiving!) Their answer: happiness tied to money eventually plateaus, and the more miserable you are to begin with, the faster it fades. But if you’re already a happy person, yes, duh, of course money makes you happier. INTERESTING A retail trader is trying to sue his bank for (what he says was) bad investment advice. Here’s a curious little story: in three short years, a B.C. day trader turned $88,000 into $415 million by trading Tesla options. He alleges that after making his first few million he approached Royal Bank to borrow against his equity to buy a home and that, instead of advising him to put a little bit of that money into more passive investments, the bank told him to buy even more Tesla. So he did — taking out loans against himself. Then the stock slumped, and he lost every penny. At least, that’s what he claims in a lawsuit filed against RBC. (The bank has yet to file a statement of defence and the claim has yet to be proven in court.) Don’t wait for your bank to protect your finances; consider diversifying. TLDR’s Jared Sullivan wrote a book! In 2008, a coal-fired power plant unleashed a tidal wave of toxic coal sludge over 300 acres in Tennessee, causing one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. We’re mentioning this now because Jared Sullivan, the lead editor of TLDR, just published a book all about it called Valley So Low. It’s a legal thriller — equal parts Erin Brockovich and Chernobyl. We’re admittedly biased, but even if we weren’t, we like to think we’d still say it was a fantastic read. If you don’t believe us (again, we’re biased!), Amazon just named it one of the month’s best new books. —Abigail Covington, Srivindhya Kolluru, and Sarah Rieger FROM OUR SPONSOR THE FOMO INDEX by Stacey Woods IMPORTANT 🏠 Most Canadian apartments are unaffordable for minimum-wage workers, especially for ones with expensive taste for things like ceilings. Source 💰 Survey shows 51% of Canadians feel underpaid. Other 49% couldn’t afford time off to answer survey. Source 📱 Fourteen U.S. attorneys general sue TikTok for being bad for children’s mental health. Adults’ mental health apparently a lost cause. Source 🚕 Tesla finally unveils the Cybercab. Cybertruck relieved that there’ll be something new on the road for people to make fun of. Source CRASH & BURN TO THE MOON 🤏 World’s smallest Rubik’s Cube costs US$5,320. Only thing harder than solving it is justifying why you bought it. Source 😎 Study finds “humourbragging” is an effective form of self-promotion, not that Webby winners like us care about stuff like that. Source 🎃 “Orangina,” B.C.’s heaviest pumpkin, weighs in at 1,161 pounds. Asks if it could try again without the stem. Source 🦝 Toronto opens new raccoon-themed park. “Nice atmosphere, but the trash selection is sorely lacking,” say raccoons. Source WHO CARES THE BIG IMPORTANT STORY Q&A Matty Matheson Was in Debt $36,000. Now He Runs a Food Empire We recently held a live taping of our podcast — the daringly-titled TLDR Podcast — in Toronto. Which was a first for us! It was a lot of fun thanks to our special guest: Ontario’s favourite chef/entrepreneur/actor Matty Matheson, who can be seen in FX’s chef dramedy, The Bear. Matty got his start working in Toronto restaurants and now owns several himself, including Prime Seafood Palace and Matty’s Patty’s Burger Club. You can listen to the full Q&A, but here’s a condensed version. What did your family teach you about money growing up? I grew up very working class. When we lived in Dartmouth, we would walk to this one place, like a Kelseys or Montana’s, and we would get one big nachos and share it. And we weren’t allowed to get pop or chocolate milk or anything. But my parents are incredible, hard-working people. We always had enough, even if it wasn’t a lot. Did they ever tell you about mutual funds or whatnot? Nah, my dad’s advice was, like, “If you get into a fight, finish it; let’s go in the backyard, and you have to fight me.” In a loving way. How did you find your way into a kitchen? Through neglect of school. I applied to four colleges and didn’t get into any. With cooking school, almost anyone can get in. I went to Humber. Every semester was, like, $1,500, so it was manageable. Let’s skip ahead to your lowest moment, when you were 29 and ended up nearly dying of a heart attack and racked up a lot of debt. When I got sober in 2013, I owed money to a lot of people. It was something like $36,000. I wanted to be responsible, so my girlfriend — now my wife — and I wrote out a path to get out of debt and hung up the list in my bedroom. Some of the people on it were, like, my buddy I’d borrowed $3,000 from. But some of the people were drug dealers. She would say, “Who’s that?” And I’d say, “Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about this column.” How much were you making and how long did it take to pay off the debt? I was making $65K. My wife and I moved into this small apartment to lower our expenses. But then I realized, Oh, if I can get more paycheques, then I can pay off this debt faster. So, in addition to my restaurant job, I started making video content [primarily for Vice]. It still took me a year to pay everyone back. Do you feel like you have a weight off you now? I’ve built a world that relies on me. I am the thing. And it is tiring. But my mantra is you’re not there yet. I thought I was gonna get rich from being on television. That didn’t happen. You have to keep doing the thing that got you there; you have to make money for yourself, because no one is going to make it for you. You have to monetize. How did you do it? I started my own YouTube channel, and I produce all my shows. I started selling barbecue in a parking lot and took that money and opened up Matty’s Patty’s, then I took that money and opened up more restaurants. Now I got hella restaurants. What have you learned about the economics of the restaurant business? If your restaurant is busy every single day and no one’s stealing from you, you’ve got like a 10% to 12% profit margin, maybe. So it’s just, like, what are we doing it for? Because there’s nothing better than feeding somebody and taking care of people. What’s your goal now? I just want my family to be safe. I want my family to have Christmas every year. I want my brother to be cool; I want my sister to be cool; I want their kids to be cool. The goal is to control what we have built. OTHER VERY GOOD READS 🎰 Canada’s Online Betting Boom Is Ruining Sports (and Lives) In two years, online sports betting has siphoned billions from fans. | Maclean’s 💨 Wind Resistance The farmers fighting backyard turbines. | The Narwhal 🤑 A Six-Step Financial Plan for Every Canadian The basics of what to do with your money, no matter your income. | Wealthsimple Magazine 👩‍🏫 Gen Z’s Economic Advisor White House officials are taking Kyla Scanlon (!) seriously. | The Wall Street Journal *Article is paywalled, which, yeah, is kind of annoying. But we think good journalism is worth paying for. POSTS OF WISDOM Proof that you can explain away any gap in your resume. 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), Clare Douglas (copy editor), Sara Black McCulloch (fact checker), Mohini Tailor (lifecycle marketing manager), Matthew Karasz (markets editor) Jared Sullivan (senior editor), Peter Martin (senior editor), Kat Angus (managing editor), and Devin Friedman (editor-in-chief). Disclosures: Contributors to this newsletters own shares in Google. Wealthsimple Media Inc. 80 Spadina Ave Suite 400 Toronto, ON, M5V 2J4 VIEW IN BROWSER PRIVACY POLICY UNSUBSCRIBE On each Order, WSII adds a margin to the exchange rate provided to us by the Liquidity Provider. See https://wsim.co/crypto-fees for details. TLDR is offered by Wealthsimple Media Inc. and is for informational purposes only. 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