Wealthsimple

June 22, 2026

In This Issue

8 min read

Energy-drink bans

Goofy smart glasses

Reverse-mortgage madness

Even if you’re not planning to leave behind an inheritance for your cat, like Karl Lagerfeld and his beloved Choupette, you need a good estate lawyer. More below. | Instagram

The Week in Markets

It’s better to be boring than broke

At last — a relatively sleepy week for investors. So we’re going to take this breather to recap all the wild scares and surges we’ve witnessed thus far in 2026, before arriving back at the present with a broader point about the virtues of boring weeks. January: gold mania! February: AI bubble! March: war in Iran! April: semiconductor mania! May: SaaSpocalypse! June: Iran ~~truce~~ ~~truce~~ truce? Yes, some people got very rich surfing the waves, and, yes, we probably all wish we’d put more money in semiconductors. But plenty of people lost big, too.

Meanwhile, the quiet unsexy story is what a banner year it’s been for boring portfolios. The TSX is up nearly 10% so far, as is the S&P 500, even minus the Magnificent 7 power boost, putting both on track for totally normal years of boringly healthy returns. Slow and steady might not win the race, in other words, but it’ll usually keep you near the front of the pack.

TSX:	+0.3% (+9.7% YTD)

S&P 500:	+1.41% (+9.4% YTD)

One Chart That Explains Everything

Reverse mortgages are coming for your inheritance

What Happened Last Week

Important

Rogers kills off free Hockey Night in Canada. Darn right this is important! One pundit likened it to “[selling] out a public institution to a for-profit company.” After 74 years on CBC, the public broadcaster’s licensing deal with NHL-rights-holder Rogers is officially over and future Saturday-night national-showcase games will air exclusively on Rogers-owned Sportsnet, whose TV subscriptions have more than tripled in cost since 2013. Sports have kept cable on life support, but now streaming is king — so we have to pay for yet another subscription just to watch some puck!

Elon’s already chasing his second trillion. After sparking Data Viz Christmas by becoming the world’s first trillionaire, Musk spent US$60 billion on Cursor, adding a suite of coding tools to help his burgeoning AI empire compete against the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI. All the action only fuelled suspicions that a SpaceX–Tesla merger is imminent, which would make Musk’s life simpler but could lead to some cranky shareholders on both sides.

Interesting

Snap CEO’s PR team does him dirty again. Twelve years after the birth of the “Glasshole,” the chef’s-kiss nickname for those future Cybertruck drivers who rushed out to wear Google’s goofy smart glasses in public, tech CEOs are still memeing themselves by wearing goofy smart glasses in public. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel — who fumbled US$40 million on this same gambit in 2017 — modelled version 2.0 last week … and Snap’s stock dropped roughly 4% at the mere sight of them. Even Meta’s Ray-Ban collab, the category’s only semi-success story, has been dogged by privacy lawsuits. Analysts treat smart glasses like they’re the next iPhone, but iPhones don’t cost US$2,195.

instant classic - Snap CEO wearing the glasses

The amusement-park business is getting rickety. We love a good roller-coaster ride, but this fascinating deep dive by The Hustle into the economic future of amusement parks left us with a pit in our stomach. Aside from almighty Disney, most parks barely scrape by, and their biggest moneymaker is often the land they’re built on: Six Flags recently sold seven of its lowest-performing parks, including Montreal’s La Ronde, for a relatively meagre US$331 million. New parks are tricky to build these days because cheap, coaster-sized plots of land near major markets aren’t easy to find.

—Jenna Benchetrit

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The FOMO Index

by Stacey Woods

Important

Latest reports reveal that Antarctica has been experiencing a heat wave. There are also unconfirmed reports of a cold snap in Hell.
Source

A humanoid robot is training to climb Mount Everest. Really wants to do it without oxygen.
Source

New trend: “dopamine sites” where you pretend to buy things. Next up: “rage sites” where you watch a delivery truck that never arrives.
Source

Canadian coffee chains sued for charging more for dairy alternatives. Going through life asking for pea milk is hard enough.
Source

Crash & Burn

To the Moon

Conservatives introduce bill to let doctors prescribe magic mushrooms. After all, Burning Man comes but once a year.
Source

Justin Trudeau attends U.S. match over Canada’s World Cup opener. Says he’s sorry he missed your soccer game, but he has a new family now.
Source

Quebec bans energy drinks for kids under 16, so if they approach you outside the dep, only buy them beer.
Source

Two rugs from The Big Lebowski are going up for auction. One’s fine, the other one’s got some sort of stain.
Source

Who Cares?

The Big Important Story

This Estate Lawyer Has Seen It All. His 5 Tips for Dying Without Money Drama

It’s not our favourite task, but we do consider it part of our editorial duty to occasionally remind you that you will die. Hopefully not soon! But someday. And just in case that day is nigh, financial prudence requires you to take some small steps now — no matter your age — to ensure your estate is in order to avoid leaving behind a mess for your loved ones. Last year we published a crash course on wills. (Upshot: get one, especially if you have kiddos.) This time we’re widening the lens to estate law with the help of Jacob Murad, president of KPA Lawyers, in Mississauga, Ont. In his own words, Murad explains how to avoid a Knives Out–style fight.

Tip 1: Two executors is usually one too many.
There are two major facets of making a will: deciding who gets your stuff and appointing an executor to distribute it. The executor piece is often what causes the biggest problems. Parents sometimes want to appoint two children equally, but then both have to sign off on everything, and nothing can move forward until they do. I knew a family where one sibling was in Canada, closer to the parents, while the other was in another country. The one abroad was named the executor, but the person here was the caretaker, so she was arguing that she should have more power, which caused lots of resentment.

Tip 2: Your spouse might not be the best executor, either.
I knew a guy who died young, sadly. He owned a business and properties in different provinces, and his wife got stuck as the executor. She had kids, and suddenly she was dealing with her husband’s business partners and properties. It was overwhelming. Being an executor is a big job, so you have to think: if you were to die tomorrow, who could handle it?

Tip 3: Be strategic about who inherits your big assets — like your house.
Sometimes parents will leave their home equally to all their children, but inevitably one child wants to keep the property while another wants cash. Now someone has to buy out the other, or everyone has to agree to sell, and that causes problems.

Taxes should factor into your decision. I knew of a situation where a family was fighting over a property. But they failed to realize that upon death, certain assets are treated as if they’ve been sold. So the CRA looked at this property and said, “Here’s the tax bill.” After all that fighting, the family was forced to sell the property just to pay the taxes.

Claire Folger | Lionsgate

Tip 4: Trusts are not magical tax-avoidance devices.
Years ago, trusts had significant tax advantages, but the rules have changed dramatically. Today, trusts are often expensive and inefficient. They require ongoing filings and accounting costs, and after 21 years, major tax consequences can kick in. Which is why I rarely recommend them.

Tip 5: Don’t endure probate without a lawyer.
I’ve seen lots of people try to handle probate — the process for verifying wills and distributing a deceased person’s assets — without a lawyer. That’s a mistake, in my view. I’ll always remember one client who came in wearing a biker jacket, looking very intense. Apparently, he had walked into a bank, but the banker was scared and refused to see him. “I’m trying to help my family member!” he insisted. So he came to my office, and he’s yelling and upset. “Here’s my card,” I told him. “Go back and give this to the bank.” Once he did, the bankers said, “Oh, OK, we’ll help.” Sometimes people just want to talk to a legal professional.

This interview, conducted by Marin Cogan, was edited for length and clarity.

Other Very Good Reads

A Love Story: Tracking Thousands of Couples During the Pandemic
A Stanford data-visualization project charts how relationships did, and didn’t, withstand COVID-19. | The Pudding

The Future of Home
The death of starter homes, how AI will transform senior living, and 10 more predictions. | Wired *

Ken Griffin’s Billions and Billions
An extended profile of the hedge fund goliath and burgeoning Mamdani nemesis. | The New Yorker *

*Article is paywalled, which, yeah, is kind of annoying. But we think good journalism is worth paying for.

Wisdom of X

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This week’s newsletter contributors: Brennan Doherty (writer), Devin Gordon (writer), Stacey Woods (writer), Jenna Benchetrit (news 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 Rogers Communications.

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

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