Plus: The great reefer resignation July 18, 2022 Made in Canada IN THIS ISSUE 📵 Rogers faces the music 🌌 NASA shares a good distraction 💵 The euro meets the U.S. dollar Estimated read time: 7 minutes WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK An Amazon worker prepares for a big sales day at a fulfillment centre. | Matthew Horwood/Getty Images The week in markets 🏦 📈 💸 😭 How was your week? Did you do anything memorable, like raise the benchmark interest rate more than it’s been raised since 1998? After BOC’s Wednesday hike, it sits at 2.5%. And the market… was pretty calm. The most notable movement was that oil prices continued to fall (down about 10% on the week). Which contributed to a 3% fall in the (energy-heavy) Canadian stock market. Crypto was also pretty chill, Bitcoin (now at $21k) and Ethereum (now near $1250) continued to dance around lows. What did we find most notable? That, in the face of surprising inflation and big rate hikes, the markets were so… quiet. We’ll see if earnings season (you read more about that below!) shakes things up in the coming weeks. — Devin, Kat, Sarah IMPORTANT Rogers ($RCI) broke Canada for a day, feels the heat. After its system-wide failure on July 8 wiped out phone and internet service, the telecom company may now face a class-action lawsuit demanding $400 for each Rogers customer (and non-customers affected by the outage). The industry Minister reacted by calling for Canada’s telecom giants to cooperate during outages. Apparently, being unable to call 911 is not a great look. INTERESTING Evidently, the only thing that can beat inflation is...Prime Day. More than 300 million items were purchased during the e-commerce giant’s sales event last Tuesday and Wednesday, which Amazon ($AMZN) is calling its “biggest” Prime Day ever. The vast majority of shoppers — 83% — reported that inflation worries were a factor in taking advantage of the sales, and a third reported waiting to buy until the big day. Amazon’s also planning a second Prime Day later this year, which Jeff Bezos has tentatively named “CHA-CHING CHA-CHING!” (It’ll actually be called the Prime Fall Deal Event. Sings, doesn’t it?) Mini-nuclear reactors might be Canada’s solution to oil prices. As Europe faces its own energy crisis, Ontario and Saskatchewan have approved a brand of small modular reactors . These nuclear reactors are tinier than their megalithic ’80s cousins but can still power 240,000 homes each. And they’re technically zero-emission... until the radioactive waste needs to be disposed of. THE FOMO INDEX IMPORTANT 💸 Six in 10 Canadians are already feeling the effects of inflation. The other four haven’t gone out in a while. Source 🛩 We’re number one? Toronto’s Pearson airport had the most delayed flights on earth last week. Source 🔭 Webb telescope sends back deepest, oldest pictures of universe ever taken. Universe finally feels seen. Source 🇷🇺 Lego pulls out of Russia. Putin doesn’t care — he was done playing with them anyway. Source CRASH & BURN TO THE MOON 🍃 Thirty percent of Canada’s first-year budtenders have already left their jobs. Perhaps they’d rather “work” from home. Source 😡 BMW to offer heated seats as a monthly subscription. Cancel anytime and keep the seat as a free gift. Source 💵 The euro hits parity with the U.S. dollar. Source 💍 Who needs a ring? Canada now has most common-law couples of any G7 nation. Source WHO CARES TLDR is better with friends! 👯 Share this link in the group chat, Slack thread, or print it out and mail it to anyone who wants to sign up. WHAT’S UP THIS WEEK WEDNESDAY July 20 Canada releases the latest consumer price index (CPI). You probably don’t need a crystal ball for this one — it’s going to be grim. The U.S. saw its CPI jump by 1.3% from May to June; if Canada goes the same way, we can expect double-digit price hikes for food, unpleasantly stiff gas costs, and lukewarm housing prices. WEDNESDAY July 20 Tesla ($TSLA) reports its quarterly earnings (for more earnings analysis, check out our Big Important Story). Last quarter hit record sales of US$18.8 billion, but some analysts say things won’t look so hot this time, as lockdowns in China and a microchip shortage hurt manufacturing output. Still, even if it’s below expectations, it could actually be one of the brighter reports this earnings season. (More on that below.) THURSDAY July 21 The Return of King Con. San Diego Comic Con is back from the (near) dead today, shrugging off an $8 million operating loss during the first year of the pandemic and some briefly missing tax-exemption paperwork that almost threatened its non-profit status. The doors of the San Diego Convention Center will open to welcome thousands of people dressed like Eddie from Stranger Things, plus some weirdos who need no costume — William Shatner! THE BIG IMPORTANT STORY INVESTING It’s earnings season! Here are 4 industries to watch Earnings season — the two weeks after each quarter ends, when companies share how much money they made or lost — started last week. It’s when investors get a glimpse of how individual firms are holding up — as well as a big-picture view across entire industries (which can lead to major stock price movements). This season, the folks who make predictions about company earnings (they’re called analysts) have issued a flurry of downgrades — when one of those analysts decides they want to predict that a company is going to do crappier than expected. Like other seasonally migrating animals, Wall Street analysts aim to stay ahead of bad weather (like a frosty recession, which some are predicting) by making sure they have the hottest takes on whether to sell or buy. The question is whether they’ve lowered expectations enough. Earnings season always tells a broader story about the economy and human behaviour (which is why it’s so interesting, in our opinion). These are the sectors that we think could tell the most interesting stories in the coming weeks: Real estate: The number of new homes being constructed across Canada trended slightly down in last month’s data. (Alberta was the big exception, thanks to an influx of oil profits.) Housing starts are something people look at to predict how the economy will behave, because a builder isn’t going to start a home it doesn’t think it can sell. It’ll be worth watching companies that support that sector, like West Fraser Timber ($WFG), which saw a 33% revenue growth last quarter and a colossal 310% growth this time last year. Earnings will be announced on July 27. Oil: Energy companies reaped record profits last quarter as countries scrambled to find alternative fuel sources to Russian oil and gas. ATCO ($ACO), Cenovus ($CVE), and TC Energy ($TRP) all drop numbers July 28. It’ll be interesting to see how these companies’ balance sheets are lookinging the face of two factors: 1) the price of crude oil — the stuff used to make gas — is dropping, although that drop likely won’t be reflected yet, and 2) a possible drop in demand thanks to interest rate hikes. Tech: In the first six months of this year, the tech-loaded Nasdaq fell by nearly a third, as once hot companies like Netflix ($NFLX, down 70% YTD), Shopify ($SHOP, down 74%), and $META (down 53%) dived. The question is whether the bleeding will continue. Netflix has already indicated that it expected to lose another two million subscribers this spring. Anything more than that could seriously shake confidence in the company— we’ll find out Tuesday, when the company reports and the streaming wars rage on. Airlines: Travel surged back after restrictions eased, so this could be a super-profitable year for airlines. Air Canada ($AC) releases numbers on Aug. 2 — shares have been sinking as the company has cancelled thousands of flights to keep up with increased demand, so its earnings will paint a clearer picture of whether the company’s profits are keeping it airborne. And a few other companies who report this week: Shopify ($SHOP), lots of big U.S. financial companies ($BAC,$GS), and, for a window into the ongoing semiconductor shortage, $ASML. — Sarah Rieger OTHER VERY GOOD READS 🐦 Elon’s Out Musk lost interest in pretending to buy Twitter |Bloomberg 🌝 We Aren’t Asking for the Moon Millennials on their very real fears about money | The New York Times 🍁 Teaching Toronto Kids About the Great Outdoors Sharing a love of nature in Canada’s largest city | The Narwhal 🙏 The ‘Shamanification’ of the Tech CEO When Silicon Valley founders flaunt a misguided pursuit of wellness | Wired THE WISDOM OF TWITTER What to do with that big check Rogers sends you because of the outage: THOUGHTS ON TODAY’S ISSUE? 🤑 Love it 🙂 Good 🙁 So so This week’s newsletter contributors: Brennan Doherty (writer), Devin Gordon (writer), Stacey Woods (writer), Sarah Rieger (news writer), Ambrose Martos (fact checker), Sara Black McCulloch (fact checker), Ciara Rickard (copy editor), Kat Angus (managing editor), and Devin Friedman (editorial director). Full disclosure: contributors to this newsletter own stock in Tesla. Wealthsimple Media Inc. 80 Spadina Ave Suite 400 Toronto, ON, M5V 2J4 Replies to this email address are not monitored. Have questions? Visit our Help Centre or submit a request to our Client Support team. 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. 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. 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