Plus: what to do when fear dominates the headlines March 2, 2026 Sign Up | View online In This Issue 8 min read 🎤 Killer album drops 📈 Soaring debt ratios 🔪 “Whodunit” getaways Real-estate prices are falling, and not just for spooky old manors. But have prices come down enough to make homes a good investment? Read below. | Warner Bros. Entertainment The Week in Markets There’s always a reason to sell Investors, like everyone else, spent the weekend monitoring the situation in Iran. The full human and geopolitical consequences of the U.S.’s and Israel’s attack remain to be seen. The primary worry is that a prolonged conflict could not only claim more lives but also snarl global supply chains, e.g., the Strait of Hormuz, and spread economic pain. News of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death kindled hopes of a swift resolution. But no one truly knows how long, bloody, or disruptive this conflict might be. In the days ahead, remember that — as Barry Ritholtz’s famous chart vividly illustrates — there are always scary reasons to sell your assets. But history shows that the investors who keep their cool when everyone else panics are usually rewarded. TSX: +1% (+7.7% YTD) S&P 500: -0.5% (+0.3% YTD) 📈 What’s Up: Netflix shares ended the week up 23.7% after the company ditched its deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. Now rival Paramount gets to (arguably) overextend its balance sheet to take it on. 📉 What’s Down: Nvidia shares sank by 7% — after it beat earnings estimates by 5.5%? Investors apparently needed more evidence that Big Tech’s chip-spending spree is sustainable — and that Nvidia’s sky-high price-to-earnings ratio is justifiable. The Chart of the Week What Happened Last Week Important Is the world starting to block and report American Big Tech? Canada’s federal minister of AI, Evan Solomon, threatened to take action against ChatGPT following a Wall Street Journal report that company employees — human ones — had warned OpenAI execs about the Tumbler Ridge mass shooter’s alarming chat history but no one did anything. The flare-up coincided with a spicy post from Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal about the growing push to “box out American [tech] giants” from some countries. To his point, in February, French authorities raided X’s Paris offices on suspicion of its spreading explicit images of children, and the EU has already put restrictions around AI. Sam Altman — appelle ton avocat! The Citrini guy was just as surprised as you were. Wall Street analyst James van Geelen, 33, founder of a small firm called Citrini Research, was in Miami last Monday to meet clients when he published a Substack post called “The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis” — a piece of speculative fiction imagining an economic death spiral triggered by AI-fuelled white-collar layoffs. Within hours, the S&P had dropped a full point and a handful of mega-caps named in the essay (Uber, Visa, DoorDash) shed more than 4% in value. That a random think piece could jolt the entire market shows just how twitchy investors are about AI’s effect on businesses. Predictably, van Geelen’s essay unleashed a tide of counterpoints. The pithiest: this chart by Citadel Securities. Interesting Professor Plum in the hotel spa with the platinum Amex. We got a kick out of (and, yes, maybe some vacation ideas from) this Bloomberg feature about boutique hotels offering immersive “whodunit” getaways inspired by murder-mystery hits like The White Lotus — featuring planted actors, stabbing “victims,” themed menus, and a cracked case all before checkout. Just pointing out here that tourism makes up a mere 1.7% of Canada’s GDP — well below that of the U.S. and much of Europe. So … come to Alberta and help solve the Bumped-Off Bailiff of Banff! Did The Life of a Showgirl’s mid-ness save countless lives? A wild new paper by Harvard Medical School researchers based on Spotify chart data found that music streaming jumps by nearly 40% on days with a major album release — and traffic fatalities jump by nearly 15%. The spikes overlapped on blockbuster drop days from Taylor Swift, Drake, Bad Bunny, Harry Styles, and more. The obvious culprit: distraction. Just imagine the carnage if The Life of a Showgirl was peak Taylor and not kind of a skip. —Claire Porter Robbins From Our Sponsor The FOMO Index by Stacey Woods Important 🗞️ Last week’s blizzard kept The Boston Globe from printing an edition for the first time ever. City’s birdcages plunged into chaos. Source 🫦 Ashley Madison shifts focus from extramarital affairs to “discreet dating.” Basically do whatever you want as long as you’re ashamed of it. Source 🏒 The Heated Rivalry cottage is available on Airbnb, but if it’s booked, there’s also a much cheaper experience called “Hughes Brothers Sin Bin.” Source 🧑‍🎤 Gen Z is inspiring an iPod comeback. They want something to listen to while they buy ringtones and print driving directions. Source Crash & Burn To the Moon 🎛️ Spotify can now reorder your playlists by BPM and key. That’s good — it’s super triggering to go from 120 in E to 140 in C-sharp diminished. Source 🌊 Canadian trash from the ’80s is washing up on a Scottish beach. Hey, that’s no way to talk about old Rush records! Source 📖 The difficult novel is also making a comeback. “Yeah, we’ll skip that one,” says Gen Z. Source 👓 There’s a new app that warns you if someone nearby is wearing smart glasses. So make sure you get smart glasses that can detect it. Source Who Cares? The Big Important Story Housing Prices Have (Sort of) Cooled. Does Buying Make Sense Now? We ran a story back in 2024 about a little thing called the price-to-rent ratio — a quick formula for figuring out whether a home is overpriced relative to the rental market — and whether buying is smart or not. Since then, real-estate prices, especially for condos, have cooled like a half-drunk cup of Tim Hortons. So we thought we’d fire up the spreadsheet, recrunch the numbers, and see which cities still make sense for buyers and which are strictly landlord territory. The Formula The price-to-rent ratio gives you a rough idea whether you’ll likely earn more money in the long run by (1) building equity in real estate or (2) renting and investing whatever you would have spent on a home in stocks or other assets. Here’s how to do it: take the purchase price of a place and divide it by the annual cost of renting a similar spot. If the result is 17 or lower, buying is likely your best path for building wealth. If you get a number around 20, it’s a coin flip. And any number over 23 means you’re probably better off renting. Now let’s look at home prices! The average home (single-family, condos, etc.) in Canada costs about $653,000 — 2.6% lower than this time a year ago. Meanwhile, the average rental costs about $2,057 a month, or $24,684 annually — the lowest since 2023. That’s a price-to-rent ratio of 26.5, which means that current conditions favour renting over buying (assuming a fairly conservative annual appreciation of 3.3% after inflation). Now let’s compare single-family homes and condos across Canada’s three biggest housing markets. Toronto Average price of a single-family home: $1,144,400 Average condo price: $542,000 Average rental: $2,504 monthly ($30,048 annually) Price-to-rent ratio: 38 (rent!) for a single-family home (though good luck finding one) and 18 (buy!) for a condo Montreal Average price of a single-family home: $684,200 Average condo price: $433,400 Average rental: $2,090 monthly ($25,080 annually) Price-to-rent ratio: 27 (rent!) for a single-family home and 17 (buy!) for a condo Vancouver Average price of a single-family home: $2.07 million Average condo price: $725,000 Average rental: $2,650 monthly ($31,800 annually) Price-to-rent ratio: 65 (RENT!) for a single-family home and 22 (buy?) for a condo So should you buy a place? It really depends on how much the property appreciates. In our first example, the average $653,000 Canadian home tilts toward renting with a 3.3% annual appreciation rate. But if that home appreciates 4% to 5% (or more) annually, then buying may be the smarter choice. And while the price-to-rent ratio today may favour buying a condo, there’s always a risk that the unit might not appreciate as much as you expect. So play around with rent-vs.-buy calculators and stress-test different scenarios. One last personal note: Another key variable in this equation is you. Renting only wins if you actually invest the money you save by renting. If you just blow all your cash on trips to Chilean Patagonia or decadent Eggslut sandwiches (coming soon to Toronto!), then the math falls apart. On the flip side, owning a home, even if it’s painfully expensive, forces you to save. So be honest with yourself: do you need the discipline of a mortgage to sock away money? How much do you like egg sandwiches? No matter what you decide to do, be sure to diversify. Post of Wisdom 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), Eva Grace Clement Cruz (specialist, product engagement), Setareh Sarmadi (senior editorial producer), Matthew Karasz (markets editor), Jared Sullivan (senior editor), Peter Martin (senior editor), and Devin Friedman (editor-in-chief). TWIM: Total returns shown in local currency, via TradingView. Wealthsimple Media Inc. 80 Spadina Ave Suite 400 Toronto, ON, M5V 2J4 Have questions? Contact us. VIEW IN BROWSER PRIVACY POLICY UNSUBSCRIBE Self-directed Investing is offered by Wealthsimple Investments Inc. (“WSII”). All investments involve risk. To get more info on our products, investment decisions, fee schedules, user testimonials, promos & more visit here. 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. © 2026 Wealthsimple Media Inc.