For 20 years, Canadian investors collected three free gifts they never paid for -- and the bill may finally be arriving.

In this episode of Insight Is Capital, Pierre Daillie sits down with Chhad Aul, Chief Investment Officer and Head of Multi-Asset Solutions at SLGI Asset Management, the team behind the Sun Life Global Investments Granite Target Date and Target Risk funds -- managing the retirement savings of millions of Canadians.

In March 2026, Chhad published five major investment themes for the year. Then a war in the Middle East, a hawkish Fed pivot, and an AI reckoning hit all at once. In this conversation, he breaks down exactly what his process did when the playbook was stress-tested -- and what advisors and investors should be doing right now.

You will learn why the US dollar tailwind that quietly boosted Canadian portfolios for two decades may be reversing, how a systematic, emotion-free investment process allowed the team to step into equity risk at the exact moment markets were most fearful, why AI is not in a bubble yet but the SaaS sector already had its reckoning, what the K-shaped economy means for your portfolio and why it keeps getting more extreme, why bonds failed as a hedge during the inflation shock and where they still earn their place, how commodities and real assets delivered when everything else sold off together, and why the shift to a multipolar world is creating the best international opportunity in a generation.

Chhad also gives advisors three specific moves to prioritize if they are overweight US equities today, explains where passive investing still makes sense and where it does not, and reveals which of his five themes he would stake the rest of the decade on.

Whether you manage portfolios professionally or are planning your own retirement, this is a conversation about how the rules of investing are changing -- and what to do about it.

CHAPTERS

00:00 - The three free gifts Canadian investors never paid for

#InsightIsCapital #ChhadadAul #SLGIAssetManagement #SunLifeGlobalInvestments #GraniteFunds #CanadianInvesting #InvestingIn2026 #PortfolioStrategy #MultiAssetInvesting #ActiveManagement #AIInvesting #RealAssets #CommodityInvesting #InflationHedge #FixedIncome #KShapedEconomy #GlobalDiversification #EmergingMarkets #MultipolarWorld #EuropeanDefense #CanadianStocks #WealthManagement #RetirementPlanning #FinancialAdvisor #SystematicInvesting

You don't need to become the insurance expert — you just need to know where the expertise lives and how to bring it to your client's table.

In the inaugural episode of Cover Your Assets, hosts Pierre Daillie and Ayal Cohen welcome Michael Wills, Director of Business Development at PPI, whose career began in the back of an ambulance.

As a paramedic, Michael arrived after the worst had already happened. Today, he makes sure it never has to.

Michael walks advisors through why the insurance conversation keeps getting skipped, how to audit a book for hidden planning gaps, and why you don't need to know everything — you just need to know who does.

00:24   Welcome to Cover Your Assets

01:39   Meet Michael Wills: From Paramedic to PPI

05:58   What a Business Development Director Actually Does

07:35   The Paramedic Mindset in Financial Planning

13:06   Compliance Complexity and the Crowded Advisor Desk

16:33   The Google Problem: When Clients Arrive With Answers

23:36   Why Advisors Keep Missing the Insurance Opportunity

26:14   The Quarterback Model: Using MGA Consultants to Protect Your Book

36:27   Insurance Is an Asset, Not a Liability

44:05   The Two-Folder Framework: Investment Portfolio and Insurance Portfolio

51:09   Need vs. Want: A Framework for Every Client Segment

53:03   Real Cases: The Client Who Claimed, and the One Who Waited Too Long

59:18   Start With Term: The Simplest On-Ramp for Any Advisor

01:01:15   Real Estate, Capital Gains, and the Insurance Solution

01:03:42   Seg Funds, Probate, and Getting Cash to Families Fast

01:09:48   The Monday Morning Move: Auditing Your Top 25 Clients

01:15:48   How to Reach Michael Wills and PPI's National Team

Michael Wills on LinkedIn

#CoverYourAssets #InsurancePodcast #CanadianInsurance #WealthManagement #FinancialAdvisor #EstatePlanning #CriticalIllnessInsurance #DisabilityInsurance #TermInsurance #LifeInsurance #HighNetWorthPlanning #PPI #MGA #HolisticPlanning #FinancialPlanningCanada #SegFunds #AdvisorAnalyst #BusinessSuccession #CanadianFinance #WealthProtection #InsuranceAdvisor

She forgot to hang up the phone — and what she overheard about herself in that boardroom became the seed of a Wall Street thriller twenty years in the making.

In this episode of Insight is Capital, Pierre Daillie sits down with Kristine Delano — Independent Board Trustee, fiction author, former Managing Director at Eaton Vance, and host of the We Talk Careers podcast (brought to you by Women in ETFs). After two decades inside Wall Street firms, where she helped win the first SEC approval on an active non-transparent ETF, Kristine walked away from the corner office and did the one thing nobody saw coming: she wrote a novel. Her debut financial thriller, The Lies We Trade, opens on the best day of a woman's career — ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange — right up until the person she trusts most begins taking it all apart.

Kristine reveals how a neuroscience and engineering background became her career superpower, why "it's all active" when it comes to investing, and the visceral true story of the conference call she never hung up on — where she heard colleagues she trusted throw her under the bus. She unpacks the power imbalances hiding in every boardroom, the micro-expressions that tell you more than any agenda, imposter syndrome at the very top (including a moving story about the late Kathleen Moriarty, the "Queen of ETFs"), and the warning her novel carries for advisors and wealth professionals: process and trust aren't always enough. Plus, a first look at her second novel — two estranged sisters, a journalist and a Wall Street CEO, on a collision course of truth versus power.

00:00 – Cold open: The executive who walked away

Find Kristine Delano

The novel: The Lies We Trade

Kristine Delano on Linkedin

Kristine Delano's Website: KristineDelano.com

#KristineDelano #TheLiesWeTrade #FinancialThriller #WallStreet #WomenInFinance #WomenInETFs #ETFs #InsightIsCapital #BehavioralFinance #ImposterSyndrome #CareerAdvice #WealthManagement #FinancialAdvisors #BookTube #ThrillerBooks #CareerPivot #Leadership #PowerDynamics #FinanceBooks #Investing

Bitcoin is down 50% from its highs — but Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan says the price is the least important thing happening in crypto right now.

In this episode of Raise Your Average, hosts Pierre Daillie and Mike Philbrick sit down with Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise Asset Management, to make sense of the 2026 crypto winter. Hougan argues this is "the best winter ever" for crypto: prices are down, but the fundamentals, regulatory clarity, and institutional infrastructure are stronger than in any prior cycle. The conversation moves from Bitcoin's role as scarce, digital hard money to the quieter, faster-moving story underneath it: stablecoins and tokenization rebuilding the plumbing of global finance.

Hougan walks through why the "neutral" Bitcoin allocation isn't zero, why advisors and institutions get stuck at the finish line even after months of due diligence, and how blockchain rails already move money and assets faster and cheaper than traditional banking. The episode closes with a deep dive into agentic AI, exploring how autonomous AI agents transacting 24/7 could become the largest driver of blockchain activity yet, and what that means for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Chainlink, and Bittensor. A must-listen for advisors trying to figure out how to talk to clients about crypto without the noise.

00:00 – Cold open: crypto winter and Bitcoin at $62K

Matt Hougan on Linkedin

Bitwise Asset Management

#Bitcoin #Crypto #MattHougan #BitwiseAssetManagement #CryptoWinter #Tokenization #Stablecoins #AgenticAI #Ethereum #Solana #Chainlink #DigitalAssets #FinancialAdvisors #WealthManagement #CryptoInvesting #BitcoinAllocation #RaiseYourAverage #InsightIsCapital #CryptoNews #Blockchain #AIandCrypto #PortfolioManagement #InvestmentStrategy #DigitalGold

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Why does doing more research make investors more confident in the wrong decision, why do warning labels often invite the very risk they're meant to prevent, and why might a friendlier robo-advisor actually produce worse investing behavior?

In this episode of Insight is Capital™, Pierre Daillie sits down with Dr. Preet Banerjee — personal finance expert, founder of Money School, and Globe and Mail behavioural finance columnist, to unpack the psychological wiring beneath everyday investing decisions. From the "cue recall simulation loop" that distorts how investors remember their own portfolio returns, to research showing that useless new information makes people more confident (not more correct), to the counterintuitive finding that warning labels can make risky products more desirable, this conversation maps the gap between what investors think they're doing with their money and what's actually steering the wheel. Preet also explains why robo-advisors with more "human" interfaces see worse adherence to their own advice, how disclosure and judgement anxiety shape client behaviour, and why clients using ChatGPT before a meeting may end up valuing their advisor's guidance more, not less.

00:00 Open: The Hidden Psychology of Money

#BehavioralFinance #InvestorPsychology #PersonalFinance #InvestingTips #WealthManagement #FinancialAdvisor #PreetBanerjee #InsightIsCapital #DIYInvesting #RoboAdvisor #FinTech #InvestingMindset #MoneyPsychology #FinancialLiteracy #StockMarket #BehaviorGap

The seasonal clock is ticking — and if history is any guide, the market's most dangerous months are still ahead.

In this episode of Insight Is Capital, host Pierre Daillie sits down with Brooke Thackray, Research Analyst at Global X and author of the long-running Thackray Newsletter, for a wide-ranging conversation about what the seasonal calendar is telling us right now — and why the market's gravity-defying melt-up may be masking a set of risks that most investors aren't pricing in.

Episode Chapters

0:00 — Introduction: Markets don't move in straight lines, but they do move in patterns

1:45 — SpaceX IPO day, the AI narrative, and the anatomy of a melt-up

4:30 — How seasonal patterns set up April's explosive rally — and what was missed

6:00 — The invisible supply shock: helium, tungsten hexafluoride, and semiconductor risk

8:00 — Sell in May didn't work — why FOMO overrides seasonality in the short term

10:00 — Ten stocks driving the index: what market narrowness really signals

13:00 — Tracking money flows: how to tell if investors are rotating or leaving entirely

15:00 — The fragility of a narrow market and what historically breaks melt-ups

21:00 — Cisco, Nortel, and One Cent Cisco: the late-90s earnings playbook and its modern echo

24:00 — Utilities, nuclear, data center buildout, and the Gartner hype cycle applied to AI

32:00 — The dead zone: August–September as the two weakest months on the seasonal calendar

33:00 — Semiconductors, South Korea, NVIDIA earnings, and what could flip the trade

38:00 — Supply chain lessons from COVID: why shortages don't heal with a flick of a switch

41:00 — Uranium, silver, copper: the commodity super-cycle quietly building beneath the AI wave

45:00 — Gold, Canadian banks, and healthcare: where seasonal inflection points are setting up now

50:00 — Why gold doesn't trade on geopolitical risk — and what it actually trades on

53:00 — The Fed's stealth QE, Kevin Warsh's debut, stagflation risk, and the M2 expansion

57:00 — Canadian banks: why foreign investors are buying what domestic investors are ignoring

1:01:00 — HAC ETF: how the Global X Seasonal Rotation Fund puts these principles to work

#SeasonalInvesting #StockMarket2026 #BrookeThackray #GlobalXETFs #HACETF #MarketSeasonality #InvestingStrategy #GoldOutlook #Semiconductors #AIStocks #NVIDIA #SpaceXIPO #CommoditySuperCycle #UraniumStocks #SilverDemand #CopperShortage #CanadianBanks #RetirementInvesting #SequenceOfReturnRisk #MarketBreadth #FOMORally #SellInMay #FedPolicy #Stagflation #InsightIsCapital #AdvisorAnalyst #ETFInvesting #WealthManagement #InvestmentPodcast #FinancePodcast

The options income ETF industry just crossed $1 trillion in assets — and almost nobody is talking about the structural flaw buried inside every one of those products.

David Dziekanski, co-founder, CEO, and CIO of Quantify Funds, spent nearly two decades building ETFs — more than 75 of them — before he saw a gap so fundamental he had to build something entirely new. In this episode of Raise Your Average, Pierre Daillie and Mike Philbrick sit down with David to examine what covered call and derivative income ETFs get wrong, why most investors don't realize it, and how Quantify's Stacked Income fund family — powered by Return Stacked ETFs and Convexitas as options sub-advisor — attempts to deliver income, full upside exposure, and genuine diversification without asking investors to choose between them.

00:00 — Introduction: The $1 trillion problem hiding in options income ETFs

Quantify Funds: quantifyfunds.com

#OptionsIncome #CoveredCallETF #ReturnStacking #ETFinvesting #QuantifyFunds #Convexitas #VolatilityHarvesting #BitcoinETF #GoldETF #IncomeInvesting #DividendETF #OptionsStrategy #WealthManagement #AlternativeInvesting #FinancialAdvisor #RaiseYourAverage #ETFEducation #ImpliedVolatility #OptionsAlpha #CurrencyDebasement #PortfolioConstruction #CapitalEfficiency #RetailInvestor #PassiveIncome #SmartBeta

Every retiree gets exactly one shot at one sequence of returns — and the first five years can quietly cost you more than half your lifetime portfolio.

00:00 — Introduction: the sequence tax and why order matters more than average return

If you think launching an ETF sounds like a great business, Eric Balchunas is here to explain why it might be the most brutal competitive arena in finance — and which products are actually winning in 2026.

Pierre Daillie sits down with Eric Balchunas — Senior ETF Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, co-host of the Trillions podcast, and author of The Bogle Effect — for an unflinching tour of the ETF Terrordome. Eric maps the structural forces that make ETF success so elusive: Vanguard and BlackRock together capturing 60% of all flows, over 2,000 funds trapped below the $50M zombie line, and a liquidation rate that could hit one-in-three. He unpacks his three C's of ETF survival (Cheap, Creative, or Cabernet), breaks down why legacy active managers finally found their footing by lowering fees, and explains the DRAM phenomenon — a memory chip ETF that reached $15 billion in 60 days by solving a real access problem. The conversation moves into Eric's 26 for '26 ETFs to Watch list, covering uranium mining, auto callable ETFs, laddered buffer strategies, and the growing derivative income space. Balchunas also shares his thesis on why the "Vanguard bid" and government backstops have fundamentally changed how markets absorb sell-offs — and why Bogle may be the most underrated behavioral economist in investing history.

00:00 — Introduction: Welcome to the Terrordome

#ETF #ETFs2026 #EricBalchunas #BloombergIntelligence #ETFInvesting #PassiveInvesting #ActiveETF #Vanguard #BlackRock #IndexFunds #ETFIndustry #Terrordome #TheBogleEffect #CoveredCallETF #BufferETF #AutoCallable #ManagedFutures #PortableAlpha #UraniumETF #DRAM #Trillions #InsightIsCapital #WealthManagement #AdvisorInvesting #InvestmentStrategy #FinancePodcast

Most portfolios already own the AI trade — but almost none own the energy underneath it, and that's exactly where the next big opportunity lives.

In this episode of Raise Your Average, hosts Pierre Daillie and Mike Philbrick sit down with Justin Huhn, Founder, Lead Analyst and Editor of Uranium Insider, to unpack why uranium is the missing layer beneath the AI trade — and why the structural supply-demand imbalance in the nuclear fuel cycle may be one of the most consequential and overlooked investment opportunities of the decade.

Justin traces uranium's journey from a forgotten commodity trading near $18/lb in 2017 to today's spot price of $85 — and explains why the bull case is more durable now than ever. The convergence of AI data center power demand, Western electricity grid strain, reactor life extensions, hyperscaler nuclear power agreements, and a deeply undersupplied fuel cycle has created a structural setup that, in Justin's view, doesn't require the AI tailwind to deliver significantly higher uranium prices. That tailwind is, as he puts it, "a bonus."

The conversation covers the full uranium fuel cycle — from mine to reactor — including why supply simply cannot respond as quickly as demand, why utilities are systematically late to contract, how hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google and Amazon entering the nuclear fuel market is a landmark signal, and how advisors can think about positioning uranium as an infrastructure-adjacent hedge on the AI power squeeze.

00:00 — Introduction: AI, energy crisis, and the nuclear renaissance

#Uranium #NuclearEnergy #AIInfrastructure #EnergyInvesting #UraniumInsider #NuclearRenaissance #DataCenterPower #SmallModularReactors #UraniumBullMarket #RaiseYourAverage #CriticalMinerals #EnergyTransition #NuclearStocks #UraniumMining #PowerGrid #AIDataCenters #AlternativeEnergy #PortfolioConstruction #InvestmentStrategy #FinancePodcast