Wealthsimple

September 21, 2026

In This Issue

8 min read

Big AI ambivalence

Blueberry theft

Mega deductions

Main Street millionaires aren’t so rare — that grandma behind the counter, for instance, like the one from Kim’s Convenience, might own seven of those stores. We explain below. | CBC

The Week in Markets

A cautionary tale from COVID’s height

It’s a strange sign of the times how many ongoing calamities seem to beg the same question: If [ ___________ ] is really so bad, then why do stocks keep on going up like everything’s fine? Pick your poison: AI. The Iran war. Trump’s trade war. The bond market. Heck, pick actual poison. And yet U.S. and Canadian markets are still up ~12% on the year and only 2.5% off an all-time high. To the bulls, this is proof that narratives are dumb, markets are smart, and the bad news has already been priced in.

A critique of that case, though, came from an unlikely source last week: Alex Tabarrok, the fintwit-famous free-marketer. He studied the global economic convulsion during COVID and discovered that, in hindsight, “the striking thing is how late the market moved”: stocks peaked a full month after Wuhan locked down and the WHO declared a global emergency. Only then did markets plunge 34% in 23 days. And the bottom coincided not with any shift in epidemiological news (in fact, the news was getting far worse) but rather with the U.S. Fed snapping into action via quantitative easing. Two takeaways: (1) lots of factors drive stock prices, including strong earnings, access to credit, and favorable government policy — three things AI currently has in its favor — and (2) just because some huge companies are still raking in historic profits doesn't necessarily mean everything’s fine.

TSX:	+0.37% (+12.5% YTD)

S&P 500:	+0.18% (+11.2% YTD)

One Chart That Explains Everything

What Happened Last Week

Important

Carney’s pitch: come to Canada, build something huge, and write it all off. The feds hosted their first Investment Summit, but let’s zip through the highlights ($325 billion in investment commitments, a pitch to privatize major airports, a sovereign internet network) so we can dig into one of the wonkier announcements: the Productivity Mega Deduction! Ottawa plans to let companies write off most capital expenditures (e.g., pipelines, bridges, servers) in their first year in order to achieve the PM’s very unsubtle goal of building lots of stuff. If adopted, Canada’s tax rate on capex will become easily the lowest among OECD countries. Similar tax breaks in the past weren’t super successful, U of T economics prof Michael Smart told us, but we’ve also never tried one quite so mega before.

What if Big AI has a secret reason for acting so spooked? After an Anthropic employee breezily acknowledged that AI might kill us all, three industry bigwigs — Amodei, Altman, and Musk — called on frontier labs to tap the brakes, with Altman labelling AI’s extinction risk “unacceptable.” (Glad we cleared that up!) So have the world’s wealthiest Dr. Frankenstein cosplayers suddenly grown fearful for humanity? Perhaps! But Cohere co-founder Aidan Gomez floated a counter-theory: they’re trying to bend regulations in their favour, form a cartel, and dictate the rules for everyone else. Smaller AI firms in Canada and elsewhere already lag the U.S./Chinese AI duopoly. The AI giants would love to keep it that way.

Interesting

A twisty-turny yarn about China, corporate theft, and … blueberries? Two decades ago, execs from U.S. farming giant Driscoll’s took a trip to China with a humble dream: make blueberries a hit in a country where people hardly eat them. And it worked — so well, in fact, that Chinese entrepreneurs ripped off the company’s patented varieties, cribbed their growing techniques, and used state subsidies to finance their operations. The WSJ’s dizzying (paywalled, sorry) story has it all: leaked messages, secret berry-snipping plots, angry Italian tomato farmers, and a woman who eats so many blueberries she’s making a bid to become China’s Violet Beauregarde.

Totally normal things are happening at WordPress. Let’s catch up on a few weeks of drama: (1) The web-publishing back-end giant is owned by a firm called Automattic, and its board puts CEO/chairman Matt Mullenweg on leave, probably due to this lawsuit. (2) Mullenweg cries “coup,” boots a bunch of people from Automattic’s Slack channel, tells employees he’s back in control, calls himself “a pirate,” and blogs about buying a houseboat. (3) Thirty-three hours later, Mullenweg is reinstated with the board’s “full support.” But the story got even juicier last week when TechCrunch reported that the interim CEO and legal chief drew up multimillion-dollar golden parachutes for each other … which came in handy when Mullenweg returned and promptly canned them both.

—Jenna Benchetrit

The FOMO Index

by Stacey Woods

Important

Google Canada is rolling out AI-powered age detection to identify underage users. Quick, kids, start searching for things like “health benefits of fibre.”
Source

Mercury is shrinking faster than previously thought. Venus is just dying to know its secret.
Source

New app, ZuckOff, tells you if you’re near Meta glasses. Install it next to your drone-dodging app, NoneOfYourBezos.
Source

Study finds smelling chocolate for 30 seconds helps men increase workout reps and reduce hunger, which is fine because it also helps them get fewer dates.
Source

Crash & Burn

To the Moon

New research discovers Chihuahuas are part coyote. “Please, we’ve got it bad enough,” say coyotes.
Source

Laptop leaves British boy lightly toasted. Now comes the agonizing decision: Marmite or Vegemite?
Source

Yves Veggie Cuisine is returning to Canadian shelves. It hopes you haven’t been getting your soy protein isolate needs met by that temptress Tofurky.
Source

Burger King promises to release more viral chicken nugget purses. We all know how embarrassing it is to bring the wrong bag to the nugget gala.
Source

Who Cares?

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The Big Important Story

How to Make Millions on Main Street

If you want to get rich, it turns out you don’t have to go to Silicon Valley or Bay Street. You might just need to open a grocery store in Gander or a car dealership in Oshawa. That’s the takeaway of The Everywhere Millionaire, a new book by Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick, economists who spent years poring through the tax data of eight million (mostly U.S.) entrepreneurs. They found something surprising: while the Forbes 400 richest people control some US$4 trillion in wealth, some three million “Main Street millionaires” — i.e., everyday small-business owners — possess a whopping $55 trillion, and most got rich in mostly boring ways. We recently spoke with Zidar about his findings and what Canadians might learn from them.

Many people feel that achieving real, substantial wealth is beyond their reach. How does your book challenge that notion?

People picture Elon Musk becoming a trillionaire and assume all the action is in AI, Silicon Valley, or Wall Street. It’s just not. Our book documents a hidden world of ordinary people who’ve gotten rich running unglamorous private businesses. Think auto dealers, beverage distributors, contractors. If you want proof, go to any nice part of Canada or the U.S. and ask who owns the big houses, and often it’s someone who owns seven Jiffy Lubes or runs a couple of dental offices.

What’s the common thread among these Main Street business owners?

They’re relentless. They rolled up their sleeves and worked hard. The typical everyday millionaire didn’t inherit their business — only about 25% are family firms. The majority founded or acquired them. They come from a broad range of backgrounds and often work for decades to build their wealth. The pool of people who can build a great business is much broader than pedigree or education alone would suggest.

Do the Main Street millionaires undercut the notion that giant corporations, private equity, and the like have hurt the middle class by hoarding wealth?

Two things are simultaneously true: people from all backgrounds can start low and end high. And yet we also write, “Main Street Millionaires are central characters in the saga of rising inequality.” Since the late 1980s, private-business owners have aggressively concentrated wealth by taking a larger share of the pie. In 2001, about 37% of pay at top-owned private businesses went to owners; by 2022, it was roughly half. [Inequality in Canada has followed a similar trend.]

OK, let’s say you’re a 30-something Canadian with an average salary and an entrepreneurial spirit and you know you’re capable of running a business. What next?

One opportunity is to look for good, cash-flowing companies whose owners are approaching retirement. Maybe their kids don’t want to take over or they don’t want to sell to private equity. Whatever the case, a small-business owner could be very interested in finding someone to take over who has a fresh vision or is willing to make a long-term commitment. And even in industries dominated by huge companies, there’s room for successful private businesses. It’s competitive, but the opportunity is still enormous.

This interview, by Claire Porter Robbins, was edited for length and clarity.

The Big Listen

Are Budget Airlines a Dying Business? 🧑‍✈️

Canadians know this all too well: budget airlines are a dying breed, with Lynx, Swoop, and Canada Jetlines all grounded for good in recent years. WSJ’s excellent podcast broke down how these Greyhound buses of the sky lost to their mortal enemies — premium flagship carriers. | The Wall Street Journal

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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).

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

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💰Meet the Main Street millionaires