Wealthsimple

September 14, 2026

In This Issue

8 min read

Canada’s EU courtship

AI extinction, egad!

A stock-route survivor

Here’s a startup idea: a blood test for secondhand awkwardness. We needed one just from watching the teaser for Nathan Fielder’s surprise Liz Holmes documentary. | A24/YouTube

The Week in Markets

The AI rally vs. Rate Hike SZN

No matter what the world throws at this AI rally — a spiraling war in the Middle East, a spiraling trade war with the U.S. — it just keeps on chugging. But now another challenger is stepping into the ring: interest-rate hikes. Market watchers are all but certain that the U.S. Fed will raise its benchmark rate a quarter point at this week’s meeting and another half point by next March, and that most other central banks will follow suit. The last time rates surged like this, stocks globally fell 25%. This time? Full speed ahead. Are investors turning a blind eye to the potential chilling effects of rate hikes? Or are AI companies driving so much revenue that even a 1% increase is shrug-off-able? And if higher rates discourage some of the more reckless over-spending on AI, maybe they’ll turn out to be a blessing in disguise?

TSX:	-2.2% (+12% YTD)

S&P 500:	-1.1% (+11.6% YTD)

One Chart That Explains Everything

Superlatives of the Week

Clearest signs of a transatlantic realignment: First Canada joins Eurovision, now we’re in talks with the E.U. on a major upgrade to our trading relationship, which could result in Canada becoming an “associate member” of the bloc. What’s on the wish list? Canada wants to diversify trade away from the U.S. and pool defence resources. The E.U. wants access to our energy and mineral reserves. And WSJ reported on Sunday that both sides want to build data centres, satellite networks, seabed cable networks, and other tech beyond U.S. influence. And if that weren’t enough pivoting, the Carney government is hosting a first-of-its-kind mega-investment summit this week to court European and other foreign investors.

Most skin-crawling documentary teaser about a fallen tech CEO: Cringe king/Canadian icon Nathan Fielder spent three years keeping a big surprise that he unveiled last week — a three-hour documentary about disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and her enormous eyeballs. A24 announced the project last week with this masterly Master-y teaser — featuring a pre-prison Holmes — and it unleashed a torrent of truly inspired memes:

how she looks at my french fries after she said she wasn't hungry

Least reassuring thread about AI mass extinction: The troubling thing wasn’t so much the Anthropic employee who quit last week by declaring on X that he could no longer stomach working on a technology that “could kill us all by the end of the decade,” because, hey, disgruntled employee, etc. More distressing was the current Anthropic employee who chimed in to confirm that — yup! — internal data put the odds at “>10%.” Alright then! A few experts threw luke-cold water on the disaster scenarios, while pundits wondered how anyone could justify working in AI. Tech Substacker Jasmine Sun put it simply: never underestimate the allure of having a cool job and making lots of money — aka “the yuppie-Nuremberg defence.”

Best business podcast to check out this week. On Sunday, the Acquired podcast teased that it’s dropping a new episode today — on the joy and bane of weekend warriors everywhere, The Home Depot.

—Jenna Benchetrit

The FOMO Index

by Stacey Woods

Important

TikTok users will soon be able to leave audio comments. Great for the busy troll who can’t remember if “chopped” has one “p” or two.
Source

Adult diapers are outselling baby diapers in Quebec. But applesauce futures looking strong.
Source

Quebec courts ban judges from using generative AI to replace judicial reasoning. It’s just for creating images of themselves riding into court on a lion.
Source

“One question: are we going to play ‘Thunderstruck’ tonight?” Rogers Stadium racing to repair storm damage before AC/DC concert.
Source

Crash & Burn

To the Moon

Thieves dropped two of the four Renoir paintings they stole from a French museum. Next time, guys, go for hinged triptychs.
Source

Hunter Biden memecoin crashes in its first few minutes. It was out cold before the hookers even got there.
Source

Alberta will now accept recently expired passports for driver’s licence renewal. It’s a nice jumping-off point for anyone considering a future in fraud.
Source

Le Creuset launches a Star Trek collection. Dammit, Jim, it’s a stockpot, not a Dutch oven!
Source

Who Cares?

From Our Sponsor

The Big Important Story

How it feels to vaporize $276,000

This week, as we barrel into fall, we wanted to look back on one of the year’s wildest market stories — the Korean stock frenzy. Korea’s KOSPI index soared an improbable 270% from January 2025 to June 2026, a surge fuelled by highly leveraged retail traders who piled into chip stocks with borrowed money. At one point, leveraged ETFs accounted for 70% of all trading value on the KOSPI. Then the rally reversed and all that leverage sparked a 40% collapse in the index. We spoke with Seoul-based college student Dan Lee, 24 — who won and then lost nearly $276,000 in the market — about the euphoric highs and painful lows of the country-wide frenzy.

Part I – The Frenzy

So all able-bodied South Korean men have to do mandatory military service for 18 to 21 months. I was in the Air Force from 2022 to 2024, and by the time I was discharged, I had almost US$15,000 saved up. But I didn’t get into trading seriously until February 2025, when I joined an investing club at university. The popular things were short-term futures and spot trading, so that’s what I got into. I also learned about margin trading.

In May 2025, everything accelerated when the KOSPI began soaring, thanks to the excitement around AI and chip stocks. The whole school was buzzing about it. It felt like a gold rush.

I got swept up in the frenzy — I won’t deny it. I knew I’d probably end up with an office job like my parents, but I wanted to get rich quick, so I bought red-hot tech stocks, like SK Hynix and Samsung.

Throughout that year, I’d wake up at 7 a.m. and plan my trades for the day. The KOSPI closes daily at 3:30 p.m., so if I had a big trade on, I’d skip class to see it through. My friends weren’t into trading as much as I was, so I would sit home alone and be glued to the markets. I felt lonely. But I wanted to make enough money to buy a house and be financially free.

Part II – The Good Life

By the summer of 2025, I was making big money. I travelled to Hong Kong, Japan, and the U.S. Beef is expensive in Korea, and I began to eat a lot of it. I took my parents to a fancy restaurant and blew almost $1,000. I even gave them a few hundred dollars here and there, which made me proud. But they were worried that I was buying stocks with borrowed money — I was trading on 500% margin. And if the stocks dropped, they would be sold automatically to satisfy my debts. But the market was euphoric. The KOSPI finished 2025 up 76%, and it didn’t slow in early 2026.

Of course, I worried about a bubble. I researched the 2008 financial crisis to help me spot the signs of a storm brewing, and I didn’t see any. But I was inexperienced.

Part III – The Unwind

By June 2026, my initial investment had grown to CAD$276,000. That’s life-changing money. Then the market tumbled. Right away, I faced forced liquidations. And my holdings just kept shrinking. I had panic attacks. I couldn’t breathe. I wouldn’t leave my house. My parents worried about me, but I wouldn’t allow them to visit. I was glued to the markets, trying to stave off my losses. But in a matter of weeks, my investments had cratered to less than $20,000.

By mid-July, something like 1.2 million retail traders in Korea had been margin called — more than 3% of all adults. And some 360,000 got completely wiped out. So it could have been worse for me, I guess.

My desire to build up everything at once destroyed me all at once. I can see that now, and I’ve become more conservative. I’m working a part-time job to save up money. My goal is to develop both boldness and patience. When you can gain, gain big. But if you have to lose, try to lose only a little.

—As told to Ian Frisch, with additional reporting and translation by David Lee. The interview was edited for style, length, and clarity.

Finance 101

Find your stock-to-bond breakdown by age

If you’re saving for retirement, what share of your portfolio should you keep in stocks versus bonds? One rule of thumb: start with 120, subtract your age, and the difference is your stock allocation. E.g., a 40-year-old would devote 80% of their portfolio to stocks and 20% to bonds. The idea here is to capitalize on higher-growth stocks when you’re young and won’t need your money anytime soon, then de-risk as you inch toward retirement.

The Wisdom of X

Thoughts on Today’s Issue?

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This week’s newsletter contributors: 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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