Plus, the financial wisdom of John Goodman September 25, 2023 Sign Up | View Online IN THIS ISSUE 7 min read 📺 Murdoch clan 👵 Pension plan 💰 Balmain stan Oops, wrong eldest boy. We basically got the Succession finale 2.0 this week, as Rupert Murdoch decided which of his children will oversee the Fox empire. | David Russell/HBO THE WEEK IN MARKETS How long will rates stay high? The economic skies got a bit cloudy last week, sending the TSX down 4%, S&P down 3%, and Nasdaq down 3.5%. Is a storm coming? Hard to tell, but investors grabbed umbrellas just in case after Canada’s August inflation came in higher (back up to 4% year-over-year) and the U.S. Fed chair gave a stern message at his monthly policy meeting. He’s ready to raise rates if needed, and they could stay there longer than he thought before. The news sent interest rate expectations to their highest levels since the 2008 financial crisis — while we all wait for the next round of data to come in and tell more of the story. THE WEEK IN ONE NUMBER $175 How much more money non-Albertans could pay each year if Alberta moves ahead with its proposal to withdraw half the Canada Pension Plan to start its own fund. The pension board, for what it’s worth, calls Alberta’s report “impossible” and “based on an invented formula.” WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK IMPORTANT Instacart’s US$10 billion IPO is both a solid win and a total disaster. Shares spiked nearly 40% on the grocery-delivery company’s Tuesday debut before settling back down around the original $30 price by the end of the week. It’s a good-enough performance that might encourage other companies to follow suit. As for that valuation, $10 billion is a lot of lettuce — depending on when you bought in. Late rounders, like Fidelity, who invested when Instacart was valued at $39 billion, lost their bespoke shirts. Early-bird VC firms Sequoia and Y Combinator, however, still saw huge returns. Like a lot of tech companies, Instacart faced a tough decision: finally let your employees and early investors cash out or hold onto the diminishing hope of somehow living up to 2021’s sky-high expectations. Canada’s feud with India could get costly. Turns out a possible government-sanctioned murder on a trade partner’s soil is a great way to endanger a blossoming $20-billion relationship — and really hamstring Canada’s search for alternatives to China. It’s way too soon for anything but wild speculation on what might happen. But if the drama escalates, some Canadian commodities (fertilizer and lentils, for instance) could be at risk. At the moment, the most popular trade between the two nations is accusations. INTERESTING Canada Post now delivers the mail and your personal data. According to an investigation brought before Parliament last week, the beleaguered postal service, which lost another $254 million last quarter, is ignoring an order from Canada’s privacy commissioner to stop selling people’s addresses and info about their online shopping habits. It’s the latest get-solvent-quick gambit from the agency that briefly but memorably dabbled in short-term loans. And this plan, they say, is sticking around. Their extremely shaky rationale? People love getting junk mail. Lachlan Murdoch won a kiss from daddy! At only 92 years old, Rupert Murdoch stepped down last week (sort of!), finally ending the real-life Succession drama among his kids by selecting his very own eldest boy as the heir to the combined US$26-billion Fox and News Corp. throne. For now, at least. —Sarah Rieger FROM OUR SPONSOR Managed accounts are offered by Wealthsimple Inc., a registered portfolio manager in each province and territory of Canada. Canada Learning Bond is provided by the Government of Canada. Eligibility and amount vary based on the number of children and household income. For information purposes only and may be subject to change by the government. THE FOMO INDEX by Stacey Woods IMPORTANT 🤖 For a few extra bucks, they’ll make you 2” taller: Startup launches service that lets celebrities protect their AI likenesses. Source ⛈️ Post-tropical storm Lee did major damage to the Maritimes. Rush’s Geddy Lee had a comparatively quiet weekend. Source 🚗 Your driver is finishing up a charge nearby: Toronto might consider banning gas-burning Ubers, Lyfts, and taxis by 2031. Source 📖 Heather’s Picks ain’t gonna pick themselves: Indigo founder Heather Reisman unretires after a month and returns to company as CEO. Source CRASH & BURN TO THE MOON ⭐ Celebrities auctioning off “experiences” to help striking actors & writers. (Opening chequebooks, writing cheques not among the experiences.) Source 🐶 Couple demands full refund for flying next to farting dog. Farting dog accepts partial refund for flying next to them. Source 🎨 “Nice Try, Buddy.” Artist who submitted blank canvas called “Take the Money and Run” must repay museum that funded it. Source 🐻 Bear found at Disney World captured and escorted out. Leather daddy allowed to stay at Epcot. Source WHO CARES WHAT’S UP THIS WEEK Paris Fashion Week starts (Monday). One interesting wrinkle: fashion house Balmain’s entire collection was stolen off a delivery truck, giving designers just one week to pull together a new runway show. Costco releases earnings (Tuesday). Its stock is on a tear this year (up 23%), but other retailers have reported slowing demand. Hey, maybe the Balmain designers can snag some Kirkland apparel if they’re really desperate. DON'T BE A TLDR HOG 🐷 Like TLDR? The first five million people to click this link can share it with a friend for free. (You can share it with enemies too but only if you’re ready for them to love you.) THE BIG IMPORTANT STORY FILM SCHOOL What John Goodman Can Teach You About Financial Independence Every few months a clip from the otherwise justly forgotten 2014 movie The Gambler makes the rounds on social media, particularly in the hustler/entrepreneur community. A loan shark named Frank (John Goodman) explains to a gambler named Jim (Mark Wahlberg) that he should build a financial “fortress of solitude” from which he can basically live his life without worrying about money. While our favourite financial advice from a celebrity will always be these five rules, Frank does make a few good points. Let’s take it line by line: You get up $2.5 million, any a**hole in the world knows what to do. Frank starts out the same way an advisor who’s never broken anyone’s knees might: by giving Jim a target. If you can save $2.5 million, he says, you can cover your big needs and have plenty left to live off of. The basic advice on saving is good. Unlike market returns, you actually have control over how much you save. But before you get to that, a good rule of thumb has always been to first pay off any high-interest debt — few investments can earn you more than the 20% you might pay on credit card balances — and build an emergency fund to help avoid needing to go back into debt. Then you can think about aiming for that $2.5 million (or whatever your goal for retirement is) and working your way through Frank’s list. You get a house with a 25-year roof … This one is tricky. Frank suggests getting a home where the major upkeep was recently done in order to limit operating costs, but real estate isn’t the world’s most reliable investment, and it’s expected to grow less than stocks and other assets in the years ahead. That said, having a mortgage does essentially force you to save money every month, and most people like having a nice home to live in. … an indestructible [Japanese]-economy sh*tbox … He’s onto something here: cars are depreciating assets, so from a financial perspective, the best car to buy is one that will cost you as little as possible over the longest period possible. And according to a recent Consumer Reports study, the auto brand that best combines low repair costs and high reliability is … Toyota. You put the rest into the system at 3% to 5% to pay your taxes, and that’s your base, get me? Frank’s next move is a conservative one: take the remaining money and invest it in something that’ll allow you to live off the yield. Not a terrible idea if you’re close to retirement and want to play it safe; right now, you can get a 5%-plus yield on low-risk GICs and government bonds. But for anyone who’s not picking their shoes based on how well they accommodate bunions, pro investors (like the late David Swensen, Yale’s longtime chief investment officer) advise a more diversified, equity-heavy portfolio. Not only has it historically yielded 7% to 10% annual returns, but many of us don’t know when we’ll need our money, so it’s important to balance our hopes of earning a lot (through the riskier stuff like stocks) with the need to earn consistently (by spreading your money around). That’s your fortress of f*ckin’ solitude. That puts you, for the rest of your life, at a level of f*ck you. Somebody wants you to do something, f*ck you. Boss pisses you off, f*ck you! Own your house. Have a couple bucks in the bank. Don’t drink. That’s all I have to say to anybody on any social level. It’s mostly outside the scope of a financial newsletter to tell you whether or not to drink, and you may want to choose a slightly less aggressive way to respond to perceived slights, but Frank’s advice ultimately boils down to saving money and anticipating potential expenses. Not bad! You won’t have to borrow money from credit card companies (or loan sharks) if life surprises you or stay in a job you don’t like just for the paycheque. And who could argue with that? —Ben Mathis-Lilley OTHER VERY GOOD READS 🌳 The Greenbelt Is Closed to Development A recap of Ontario’s year-long environmental-protection drama | The Narwhal ❄️ Ski Resorts Are Giving up on Snow With natural snow getting scarcer, resorts consider their future | Wired 🤑 The Non-Nepo Baby’s Guide to Being a Millionaire We did the math on what it’ll take to retire | Wealthsimple THE WISDOM OF TWITTER X And they still tied the produce bags wrong. 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), Nikki Holmes (copy editor), Sara Black McCulloch (fact checker), Mohini Tailor (senior LifeCycle specialist), Jared Sullivan (senior editor), Peter Martin (senior editor), Kat Angus (managing editor), and Devin Friedman (editor-in-chief). 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. When you invest, your money is at risk and it is possible that you may lose some or all of your investment. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Historical returns, hypothetical returns, expected returns and images included in this content are for illustrative purposes only. Always research before investing. © 2023 Wealthsimple Media Inc.