Welcome to TLDR’s semi-definitive guide to the fourth quarter! December 22, 2025 Sign Up | View online IN THIS ISSUE 8 min read 🏢 Condos a-crashing ☠️ Platforms a-crapping 🧑‍💻 Colleagues a-slopping Welcome to TLDRQ4, our semi-definitive guide to what happened in the final three months of 2025. Enjoy this year-end rundown, and we’ll be back in your inboxes on Jan. 12. But first: what should we cover in 2026? Use the feedback module below to let us know. —The Editors THE YEAR IN MARKETS 2025: A Totally Normal, Triumphant Year for Markets (Yes, Really) If we had to pick a single word to sum up 2025 in markets, it would be worrywart. Again and again, the headlines sounded alarms about crises that never materialized. The year started with angst about once-in-a-century equity-market concentration, which got swiftly overtaken by fears about a “once-in-a-century trade war” that would push the U.S., Canada, and the rest of the global economy into a once-in-a-century depression. And when that didn’t happen, we moved on to quaking about how irrational exuberance for a once-in-a-century technology was fueling a once-in-a-century AI bubble — a bubble that now looks further from bursting than it has at any point this year. In fact, now that the results are (mostly) in and we’ve looked at the charts, the past year looks remarkably … normal. Even the big market swings, though nauseating in real time, ended up being more kid-coaster than Canada’s Wonderland. Take the S&P 500: the tariff-fuelled 20% drawdown early this year and the 17% year-to-date rally were both in line with historical intra-year swings. The TSX, meanwhile, rebounded from a stock rout in April to post a stellar year, and Canada’s bruised economy has held up better than expected. None of this has stopped the worrywarts from ginning up fresh fears for 2026: energy shortages! Diminished central-bank independence! Reckless private credit! And, who knows, maybe one of these concerns will create some trouble. But if 2025 taught us that myriad “reasons to sell” might not, in fact, be reasons to sell at all, then here’s another reminder to think twice. Q4 IN NUMBERS Oct. 1 – Dec. 19 TSX: +6.3% (+31.7% YTD) S&P 500: +2.5% (+17.6 YTD) Nasdaq: +2.5% (+21% YTD) Magnificent 7: +2.9% (+24% YTD) Global stocks ex-U.S.: +2.8% (+31% YTD) Total returns shown in local currency through market close on Dec. 19. Data: S&P and Trading View. $MAGS shown for Magnificent 7. $VXUS shown for global stocks ex.-U.S. THE BIG IMPORTANT STORY YEAR IN REVIEW The Seven Words That Defined This Topsy-turvy Year in Money Wow. The writers’ room sure crammed as much plot as possible into the past 12 months. To catalogue just how much the world has changed since January, we picked seven words (not including worrywart) that best sum it all up. Understand them, and you’ll be pretty much caught up on everything money-related that happened in 2025 — and well-prepared for 2026. Abundance The title of this poli-sci bestseller from journalists Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein became one of the most inescapable words of 2025 and is now shorthand for an entire philosophy toward modern governance. The book’s central thesis is that the U.S. has become a nation of shortages — in housing, infrastructure, health care, etc. — and liberals need to slash regulations in order to build more stuff and win back the swing and working-class voters they’ve lost. The book has resonated here in Canada and inspired a wave of so-called abundance bros who want to fast-track projects, even at the expense of social-justice and environmental considerations. Which has, of course, won them some criticism. AI bubble We could spill thousands of words laying out the cases for why AI is definitely a bubble (as Morgan Stanley did) and why it’s definitely not (as JPMorgan did). But both arguments are grappling with the same question: can AI generate enough profits to justify the outrageous fortunes — nearly half a trillion U.S. dollars in 2025 alone — that tech giants are spending to build out their platforms? Fears crested this fall amid weeks of stories about Enron-style circular deals propping up the entire sector and, by extension, much of the global stock market. But investors exhaled in late November when Nvidia’s oversized earnings seemed to settle the debate, or at least punted it into 2026. “Condo crash” Canada’s high-rise condo perma-boom of the 2000s came to a halt in 2022, when interest rates shot up and demand collapsed. Since 2022, in fact, the total number of condo units sold in Toronto (the country’s biggest market) has declined 75%, meaning it’s effectively frozen. Prices across Canada have come down about 21%, prompting some media outlets to dub it a “condo crash,” which is a bit of a stretch. The drop is substantial, sure, but condo prices are still up 77% over the past decade — so units remain out of reach for many buyers. Elbows up A nod to Gordie Howe and his unflinching style of play, “elbows up” became a national rallying cry after Trump threatened to turn Canada into the “51st state” and slapped tariffs on Canadian steel, lumber, auto parts, and more. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently weighing whether to toss out Trump’s tariffs; prediction markets don’t like his chances. Win or lose, though, the president’s provocations succeeded in powering a wave of “buy Canadian” campaigns and a mass travel boycott of the States, as well as led to retaliatory tariffs on all sorts of U.S. imports (most of which have since been rolled back). We even sold more oil to non-U.S. countries than ever before, making America now slightly less far and away our biggest customer. Enshittification In his latest book, Canadian thinker/science-fiction author Cory Doctorow outlines his grand unifying theory of why tech platforms inevitably and inexorably turn, uh, sh*tty. The cycle goes like this: platforms lure in users with generous features, then gradually degrade them with monetization strategies (e.g., advertising), until the service stops providing any real value for users and exists only to rake in money. Doctorow coined the term in 2023, but his new book helped it go mainstream, and accusations of enshittification have been flying all year. NFL Redzone: enshittified. Instagram: enshittified. Xbox Game Pass: enshittified. (TLDR: never better, baby!) Great Divergence For much of Bitcoin’s brief history, it has generally traded in lockstep with other speculative investments, particularly U.S. tech stocks. At least that was true until this October, when it pulled a Robert Frost and took a different path: U.S. tech stocks are now up more than 20% on the year, while Bitcoin is down 5.6%. Wasn’t 2025 supposed to be the year crypto went legit? Didn’t noted curmudgeon Jamie Dimon, of JPMorgan Chase, finally come around on Bitcoin? Yes. But with the economy on both sides of the border looking a little shaky, some crypto whales have apparently decided the time is ripe to cash out. Workslop Generative AI is supposed to make us all magically more productive. And it has reduced some workplace drudgery — one study found that Microsoft’s Copilot AI helped workers cut time spent writing emails by 1.4 hours a week, a 12% decline — but the trade-off for these modest efficiencies has been a deluge of workslop, i.e., low-quality, needlessly long AI-generated emails and memos with writing that can be generously described as, well, sloppy. Which is why in 2025, the drudgery of writing emails was replaced by the drudgery of parsing baggy, AI-written notes from colleagues. —By Brennan Doherty, Devin Gordon, Claire Porter Robbins, and Jared Sullivan. Illustration by Antonio Giovanni Pinna. THE FOMO INDEX by Stacey Woods IMPORTANT 🎞️ Starting in 2029, the Oscars will be airing exclusively on YouTube. It’s a good place to land before their final move to Google Meet. Source 📖 Adult novel Onyx Storm once again tops Toronto Library’s most-borrowed books. Larger books to hide it in are also getting a bump. Source ✉️ Canada Post promises that kids writing to Santa will get a response but reminds everyone that Santa often communicates through Loblaws grocery flyers. Source 🇨🇦 Linguists urge Carney government to stop using British spellings. If nothing else, it’ll create jobs for the letter “z.” Source CRASH & BURN TO THE MOON 📰 NYT Games is the latest to launch a year-end recap. Look for it next year in your “Your Year in Wraps Wrapped.” Source 🥞 Denny’s introduces syrup-infused sneakers called “Sticky Kicks.” Will go great with the waffle-knit robe you’ll be wearing (home alone with no friends). Source 🤖 Newly bankrupt iRobot says Roombas will still work. “We shall fight on the carpets and in the halls. We shall never surrender,” say cats. Source 🪳 German startup is developing tech to turn cockroaches into spies. They’ve got a tiny Aston Martin, but they’re having trouble with the exploding pen. Source WHO CARES Thoughts on Today’s Issue? Love it Good So so This week’s newsletter contributors: Brennan Doherty (writer), Devin Gordon (writer), Claire Porter Robbins (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). Disclosures: Contributors to this newsletter own shares in Microsoft and The New York Times Company. Wealthsimple Media Inc. 80 Spadina Ave Suite 400 Toronto, ON, M5V 2J4 Have questions? Contact us. VIEW IN BROWSER PRIVACY POLICY UNSUBSCRIBE TLDR is offered by Wealthsimple Media Inc. and is for informational purposes only. 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