Wealthsimple

May 11, 2026

In This Issue

8 min read

Luxury’s struggles

GameStop’s gambit

AI’s shopping chops

Hrrmmmm … Homie ruins another birthday with a bad present. Is AI better at gift giving than humans are? We investigate below. | Twentieth Century Fox

The Week in Markets

How South Korea’s stock market pulled ahead of Canada’s

The wildest stock-market run of 2026 (so far anyway) didn’t emerge from Wall Street or Bay Street: it came from Seoul. South Korea’s KOSPI is up ~75% YTD, making the TSX’s 7% and the S&P 500’s 7.6% climbs look like rookie numbers. The Korean index hit another record last week and overtook the TSX to become the world’s seventh most-valuable stock market. And for that it can thank one thing: semiconductors. Samsung and SK Hynix — keepers of the highly sought-after DRAM chips currently in short supply — make up 42.2% of the entire index.

The S&P 500 isn’t as chip-concentrated, but it’s being driven by a similar dynamic. There’s now growing chatter about a chip bubble, but history shows that sudden booms can persist (hello, Nvidia!). They’re only called bubbles if stock prices reverse — and that can take time.

TSX:	+0.3% (+7% YTD)

S&P 500:	+2.3% (+7.6% YTD)

📈 What’s Up: Adidas (+8.34%), riding a wave of London Marathon glory, got another leg up on Friday with an epic five-minute Chalamet-led, soccer-star-studded World Cup ad that put Nike to shame.

📉 What’s Down: Shake Shack (-27%), the fast-casual burger chain, reported a $300K net loss as it struggled with cattle costs and weather woes.

One Chart That Explains Everything

What Happened Last Week

Important

The S&P and Nasdaq are bending their own rules to lure big IPOs. Tech darlings SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic all plan to go public this year with multibillion- or multitrillion-dollar valuations that could fundamentally change the DNA of stock markets. The latter two are also famously still in the red — so the S&P is toying with removing its profitability rules for high-value companies, making it easier for buzzy firms to join the index. Nasdaq is also fast-tracking entry, and no wonder: the exchanges have been itching to reboot a dormant IPO landscape, and, per Bloomberg analytics, the biggest privates could rake in up to US$143 billion in IPO proceeds.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security asked Big Tech to snitch on a Canadian. And now he’s suing them. The U.S. agency used an obscure 1930s trade law to justify its demand that Google share a foreign citizen’s private data after he criticized ICE on social media. Google says it hasn’t complied (yet), but the incident is fuelling urgency among Canadian lawmakers about “digital sovereignty” — the idea that a country should own and control its own data. That includes the authority to resist U.S. laws like the CLOUD Act, which requires major U.S. tech companies to surrender data regardless of where it’s stored.

Interesting

The GameStop-tries-to-gobble-eBay saga keeps getting juicier. Following his tetchy visit with Andrew Ross Sorkin, GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen spent the week taunting eBay and giving a slightly more expansive explanation of his US$56 billion bid for the auction platform … and it still sounds pretty goofy. But here, according to Cohen, is The Plan: GameStop is offering US$125 per share to eBay shareholders, with 50% paid out in cash totalling $28 billion (two-thirds from TD Bank, a third from GameStop) and the remaining 50% in GameStop shares. Add some aggressive cost cutting, he says, and voilà — the deal basically pays for itself! He might need it to, because eBay may ban Cohen again for selling vintage Nintendo games and other stuff to finance the buy.

Forget eBay — wanna buy Marc Jacobs instead? Just weeks after LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault issued a stark warning about the slumping luxury sector, now come reports that the company might be weighing whether to sell off brands like Marc Jacobs and Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty. With the Iran war all but shuttering the Gulf region as a high-end shopping destination, LVMH sales in Mideast malls have slowed by as much as 70%, and labels like Versace and Jimmy Choo have temporarily closed stores. Where will the Devil buy her Prada now?

Some exciting TLDR news! Jenna Benchetrit is our new senior business and markets reporter! Jenna, who wrote all the snappy news items above, joins us from CBC News, where she covered business (occasionally dabbling in entertainment and politics). She once interviewed Hugh Jackman at TIFF, but she’s really in her element with a very different Tiff. Welcome to TLDR, Jenna!

From Our Sponsor

The FOMO Index

by Stacey Woods

Important

Nearly half of new podcasts appear to be AI-generated. “Keep up the good work,” say listener bots.
Source

Delta eliminates drinks and snacks on hundreds of short flights. And they might make you buy an extra seat for your Cinnabon.
Source

Canada gets its first stablecoin. And since it’s Canadian, it’s also a politecoin.
Source

Kids are using fake moustaches to bypass age verification online. Maybe there is hope for today’s youth!
Source

Crash & Burn

To the Moon

New study finds millennials are the generation least likely to tip. Sorry, they didn’t teach tipping at Hogwarts.
Source

Thousands of dollars’ worth of underwear stolen from a Montreal warehouse. Good thieves know you can’t commit decent crimes in dirty underwear.
Source

Roomba inventor develops a nebulous AI-powered pet. It can’t wait to vex your actual pet even more than a Roomba.
Source

Lawsuit accuses U.S.’s Cento Fine Foods of committing “tomato fraud.” It’s a serious offense, not unlike tuna phishing, that’ll land you in the can.
Source

Who Cares?

The Big Important Story

AI vs. Spouse: The 2026 Gift-Giving Showdown

Of all the brave new ways AI is expected to reshape the world, one of the biggest — already — is shopping. AI shopping agents are projected to drive as much as $5 trillion in global commerce by 2030, and nearly half of all consumers have already used one. But are chatbot shoppers actually good at something so personal and particular? To put the bots to the test, my editor gave me cash to buy three presents ($100, or US$75, max each) for my impossible-to-shop-for husband, Riley. The challenge: pick one gift myself sans AI, then use Claude and ChatGPT to pick the other two. The judge? Riley, who knew that two of his gifts had been chosen by AI but didn’t know which.

Gift picker #1: Riley’s Brilliant, Radiant, Humble Wife
When Riley indicates affirmative interest in something, I add it to a list on my phone because he has lots of ideas and a garbage memory. On that list is the perfect STEM curio for my STEM-curious husband: aerogel, the lightest solid on earth and Riley’s latest TikTok obsession. Problem: it was back-ordered. But I’m a nimble journalist, so I quickly pivoted to Googling “gift guide for husband,” scanned three lists, and found a Tiny TV DIY kit (US$75) from Wirecutter’s boyfriend gift guide. Very Riley-sounding. And so, staking my entire reputation as a wife on this gift, I clicked “buy.”

Gift picker #2: ChatGPT
I started with a generic prompt: I need a gift for my husband. HELP! ChatGPT spat out 10 generic gift ideas, plus this bit of generic wisdom: “Personalized gifts stand out because they show effort and thought instead of just spending money.” Wow. So true. Clearly, ChatGPT needed more direction. I asked for some “wow factor,” and its suggestions (wooden desk organizers engraved with his initials, Bluetooth headphones) did not wow. Finally, I asked for something “rare” and “curiosity igniting,” and it suggested this Soma Shaker Cube Puzzle ($52). I bought it just so I could quit scrolling past mugs labelled “sarcastic comment loading.”

Gift picker #3: Claude
I gave Claude the same initial prompt, but unlike ChatGPT, it actually asked some follow-up questions about the occasion, my budget, and Riley’s interests. Promising! I checked the boxes for Tech & Gadgets and Arts & Hobbies. The first batch fit the categories but felt impersonal: a phone-charging station, fancy pens. Its questions were good — does Riley work at home or in an office? Does he use an Apple or a PC? — but the recs still didn’t get much better, and many of them topped $100. So I chose a gift from earlier in our conversation: Teenage Engineering’s PO-12 ($73), a pocket-size synthesizer and drum machine.

The Verdict
Riley really liked the pocket synthesizer and correctly guessed that a chatbot had recommended it, presuming I wouldn’t buy him music gear. As for the puzzle cube, he (wrongly) assumed I picked it because he’s a noted Puzzle Guy. He found the Tiny TV amusing but didn’t think he’d use it much. His official ranking:

Teenage Engineering’s PO-12 (Claude)
Soma Shaker Cube Puzzle (ChatGPT)
Tiny TV (love of his life)

Last place. Devastating. But also illuminating! I won’t be surrendering all gift-shopping duties to AI anytime soon, but the process did clue me in to a fresh destination for unique presents: museum gift shops. Also, when I told Riley that I tried to buy him aerogel, he gasped. “That would have easily cleared the other gifts,” he assured me. So while I lost this round to AI, the Notes app on my phone remains undefeated and my spousal reputation has emerged (mostly) intact.

—Mia Mercado

Post of Wisdom

when my wife asks how we are going to afford our trip

Thoughts on Today’s Issue?

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This week’s newsletter contributors: Jenna Benchetrit (writer), Brennan Doherty (writer), Devin Gordon (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), Lauren Edwards (production coordinator), 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 Nvidia.

TWIM: Total returns shown in local currency, via TradingView.

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🧓 Hollywood’s hot senior summer