Wealthsimple

October 13, 2026

Warner Bros.

In This Issue

8 min read

The AI buildout boom has a surprise winner: long-haul truckers

Plus!

Big Tech rocks Brazil

Oura’s IPO woes

The Idea of the Week

Stocks ♥️ political gridlock

by Peter Arkle

Alas, U.S. political chatter is bound to be ceaseless until the midterm elections — but why is that relevant to a Canadian money-themed newsletter? Because something odd is happening this time: stocks have historically been sluggish in midterm years, but so far in 2026, the S&P 500 is up 13.6%. That rally is mostly thanks to Big Tech, sure, but Edward Jones suggests it’s gotten a boost from Trump’s GOP 1) staring down a shellacking and 2) perhaps sharing power with the Democrats until 2028. All personal politics aside, that’s probably good news for stocks because divided governments tend not to pass disruptive new policies. In fact, since 1930, the S&P 500 has historically climbed by 5.6% over average in Q4 after midterms because the president’s party often loses power.

TSX: +1.1% (+12.1% YTD)

S&P 500: +1% (+13.5% YTD)

Graph: U.S. midterm years are usually rough for stocks. Not in 2026. Big Tech has pushed the S&P 500 way up, and some investors bet markets will benefit further from a more constrained president if the Democrats take Congress.

What Happened Last Week

Important

Canadian-owned Circle K gets caught overcharging shoppers. A team of enterprising reporters at The Guardian found that Couche-Tard-owned Circle K (and its chief rival, 7-Eleven) habitually charged more at the register than the advertised shelf price — allegedly fleecing customers on everything from gas to snacks (e.g., a pack of US$3.99 Wrigley’s gum on the shelf cost US$4.99 at the cash register). One legal expert told the paper that big companies with fancy-shmancy inventory-management systems have no excuse for these kinds of discrepancies. So even though we know all about deceptive pricing here in Canada, we’ll repeat this evergreen advice anyway: pay attention at checkout!

Is Big Tech helping swing Brazil’s presidential election? The country has long been a petri dish for Silicon Valley thanks to lax regulations and 213 million über-engaged netizens, but in his excellent tech-culture newsletter, Garbage Day, Ryan Broderick makes a compelling case that U.S. social-media giants have — perhaps unwittingly, perhaps not — tipped the scales for far-right presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro (son of imprisoned ex-president Jair). Meta briefly blocked incumbent Lula’s Facebook ads this summer for still-unexplained reasons, while Bolsonaro-aligned Instagram accounts have experienced record growth. Far-right Evangelical influencers have grown so popular on YouTube they’ve transformed the religious DNA of a country that was 80% Catholic just three decades ago and is now closer to 50%. Broderick argues that Lula will have to overcome a hostile social-media environment to challenge Bolsonaro.

Interesting

Oura’s aborted IPO holds a lesson about the gadget market. The smart-ring startup tried to position itself as a US$15-billion data company ahead of its now-shelved IPO — but investors didn’t buy it, per The Wall Street Journal, seeing it as a one-hit wonder whose one hit has already saturated the market. See also: Peloton, Fitbit, and GoPro. All started strong, then ran into the same problem.

—Jenna Benchetrit

Graph: Is your gadget stock a one-hit FitBit?
Investors have learned that, as nifty as a device might be, usually consumers just need one — which is not exactly great for a company’s future earnings prospects.

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The FOMO Index

by Stacey Woods

Important

Warner Bros.’ Digger might be the biggest bomb of the 21st century. John Carter, Cats feeling pretty good right now.
Source

Paramount completes US$81B takeover of Warner Bros. Now there’s no getting away from Digger.
Source

NYC parents are sending their kids to a junkyard-style playground called “The Yard.” Little Maeve even used an old hubcap to make a batch of hooch!
Source

Jane Austen fans are divided over the Sense and Sensibility book-shaped popcorn bucket. Either way, having one in your parlour can be a real breeches-dropper.
Source

Crash & Burn

To the Moon

B.C. hiker rescued after AI gets him stranded. But it did find him a fun podcast about the Donner Party to listen to while he waited.
Source

Bringing any Canadian alcohol into the U.S. is now a crime. Imagine having to tell the other inmates you’re in there for keistering a Molson.
Source

Philadelphia holds its first-ever parallel-parking competition. (Squad of slow-clappers on the sidelines not officially part of the event.)
Source

Rescue kittens take field trip to an aquarium. They put in their dinner orders, and now they’re even more confused.
Source

Who Cares?

The Big Important Story

Less than 5% of Canada’s truckers are women. I’m one of them

Here at TLDR, we love hearing about how people are navigating the modern job force in surprising ways, and the huge AI buildout economy has juiced demand in obvious sectors like microchips, but also some unexpected ones like AC units and backhoes. Another surprise winner? Trucking. All that computing gear and construction material has to get on-site somehow, and there’s good money in driving it there (at least until AI replaces that, too). Long-haul truckers can pull six-figure incomes, which helps to explain how Samta Makkar, 33, wound up hitting the open road. She moved to Toronto from New Delhi, India, in 2016 to study computer technology, but in 2023, she pivoted to trucking. Here in her own words, she discusses the pros and cons of the job.

I had been doing IT for a couple of years, but I just felt like a corporate job was not right for me long-term. I had to do something else. So when two colleagues mentioned trucking, I looked into it. I didn’t tell my family, though — in India, you’re expected to be a doctor or an engineer, so I worried about what they’d say.

It took me almost eight months to find a job after I got my trucking licence. Whenever someone heard a woman with no experience calling, they were like, “There is no job for you.” So I started walking into companies with my résumé and saying, “If you’re not going to give me this chance, then how am I ever going to get the experience?” Eventually, that worked, and I got hired.

On the first trip, I was scared as hell. I’d never been to the U.S. before, and I didn’t know how to use my GPS. I ended up on a street with no exit except through a residential area. I was about to cry: if the police saw me, they’d give me a ticket. I considered calling my company and saying, “This is where the truck is. I’m taking a flight back!” Then a local driver saw me and stopped. “My sister, you’re doing good,” he said. He tried to help me reverse, but my truck was too big, so he guided me back through the residential street. Eventually, I got back on the main road.

In the beginning, I didn’t realize how hard it is to find parking at night. Every gas station and truck stop was full. Some nights, I’d park on the highway shoulder near a rest area. I could feel the trucks passing and worried one would hit me. When I sleep in the cab and it doesn’t feel safe, I don’t get out at all. I strap the seat belt around the door and buckle it so nobody can open it. We also have to watch fuel, especially now. If it’s really hot at night, we can’t leave our truck idling, because it uses gas. And if it’s really cold, we have to be freezing in the truck.

I’m on the road five or six days a week. I make Maggi noodles and omelets on the hot plate in my cab. Sometimes I cook rice or biryani. When I started, I wasn’t eating well, so I drank a lot of water. But that meant more bathroom stops, and washroom access is something women have to plan for. The job is hard: your sleep pattern is different, you can’t eat properly, you’re going through customs. But in my first year, other truckers would often tell me, “We are so proud to see a woman do this. You’re doing a great job.” That kept me going. After a year, I told my family what I was doing and they were so proud.

The best part of this job is the adventure. You don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. The worst part is the pay. You can easily make $100,000 in a good year, but I don’t think the money fully justifies the lifestyle. This is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. We’re risking our lives.

I don’t think trucking will ever be 100% autonomous. If anything, it’ll be like autopilot on an airplane. I might switch jobs one day — I already have my realtor’s licence — but I have no plans to leave transportation. I just love trucking. I’ve had conversations with truckers who have been in it for 25 or 30 years. They’re just like, “We love it. We have independence. We have freedom.” You can’t sit in an office and do that kind of work.

This interview, conducted by Marin Cogan, has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Wisdom of X

You're bearish YouTube? Warren Buffet spends his evenings streaming YouTube on his living room television and you're bearish?

Thoughts on Today’s Issue?

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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).

Total returns shown in local currency, via TradingView.

Correction: Last week, we mistakenly reported that the yield on 10-year U.S. bonds had recently breached 5.6%, when it was, in fact, the yield on 30-year U.S. bonds. We regret the error.

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