Markets can recover from a downturn. Your retirement cannot recover from cyber fraud.

In this episode of Insight Is Capital, host Pierre Daillie sits down with Cary Williams, Portfolio Manager and Director of Research at North Road Investment Counsel, and Mykhailo "Misha" Niemtsev, North Road's Digital Risk Advisor, to make a compelling and data-backed case that cyber fraud belongs in every retirement plan alongside inflation, longevity, and sequence-of-returns risk.

Drawing on Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre data, their whitepaper The Retirement Risk No One Is Planning For, and direct client experience, Cary and Misha reveal that the average spear phishing loss per victim reached $107,000 in 2024, representing 10 to 15 percent of the average retiree's liquid assets. They examine the AI-powered tools criminals now deploy, including voice cloning, deepfake video, and automated phishing at massive scale, and explain why the very clients who believe they are immune are statistically the most vulnerable. Misha walks through the eight-module digital protection program he has built for North Road's high-net-worth clients, distilling it into the 20 percent of actions that deliver 80 percent of the protection, and makes the case for advisors to add cyber risk to every client conversation, not as a footnote, but as a standing agenda item.

0:00 - Introduction: The retirement risk that never appears in the plan

Whitepaper:The Retirement Risk No One Is Planning For

Free Digital Risk Self-Rating Tool (anonymous, no email required): Take the Digital Risk Quiz at northroadic.com

#CyberFraud #RetirementPlanning #FinancialPlanning #WealthManagement #Cybersecurity #IdentityTheft #ElderFraud #RetirementRisk #InsightIsCapital #DigitalRisk #SpearPhishing #AIScams #CanadianInvestors #FinancialAdvisors #ProtectYourRetirement #CyberSecurity #RetirementSecurity #FraudPrevention #WealthProtection #CanadianFinance

What if the biggest edge in manager selection wasn't due diligence, but ownership — literally betting your own balance sheet alongside the managers you back?

In this episode of Insight is Capital, host Pierre Daillie sits down with Ash Lawrence, Head of AGF Capital Partners, to unpack a strategy that flips traditional manager selection on its head: AGF doesn't just allocate capital to alternative managers, it takes meaningful ownership stakes in them. Ash explains why AGF holds majority or significant equity in New Holland Capital, Kensington Capital Partners, and SAF Group — three managers spanning absolute return, private credit, private equity, and venture capital — and how that ownership model delivers deeper transparency, better alignment, and real accountability that a typical sub-advisory relationship can't match.

#AlternativeInvestments #PrivateEquity #PrivateCredit #VentureCapital #AGFCapitalPartners #AshLawrence #InsightIsCapital #WealthManagement #FinancialAdvisors #DefenseTech #HedgeFunds #PortfolioDiversification #InvestingPodcast #AssetManagement #ManagerSelection #MacroInvesting #CanadianFinance #InvestmentStrategy

Raise Your Average hosts Pierre Daillie and Adam Butler sit down with Michael Green, Chief Strategist and Portfolio Manager at Simplify Asset Management, for a deep dive into the passive investing thesis he has spent over a decade researching, defending, and stress testing.

Green argues that trillions of dollars flowing automatically into index funds via 401(k)s, RSPs, and defined contribution plans have created a market where price no longer reflects judgment about value. He walks through the mechanics of the "inelastic market hypothesis," the outsized role of leveraged and levered sector ETFs like SOXL, the Grossman-Stiglitz framework and why its core assumptions no longer hold, and why active and value investing have become structurally disadvantaged in the current regime.

The conversation also covers the 2026 macro backdrop of a US-Iran conflict, an oil shock, and equities at all-time highs despite it, the risk of a passive "end stage," and where genuine diversification (like managed futures) still fits. It's a candid, occasionally combative, and consistently illuminating discussion for anyone trying to understand why markets are behaving in ways that don't match historical patterns.

00:00 – Introduction: has the market stopped pricing risk?

08:00 – Welcome to Michael Green; setting up 2026's contradictions

09:00 – The 50-year shift into "all equities all the time"

10:00 – How ETF mechanics reduce market elasticity

12:00 – Why pod shops and passive flows ignore fundamentals entirely

13:00 – Leveraged sector ETFs (SOXL) aren't really passive

15:00 – Echoes of the dot-com bubble: 1999 vs. today

18:00 – Circular funding and Mag Seven earnings

41:00 – Momentum, autocorrelation, and portfolio construction under passive dominance

44:00 – Pushback from the Financial Times and mainstream finance media

44:30 – Malkiel's Paradox of Skill and the Grossman-Stiglitz framework, unpacked

47:00 – Why the "equal endowment" assumption is false

49:00 – The large-stack player sets the terms of the market

50:00 – The Inelastic Market Hypothesis (Gabaix and Koijen) and Green's updated multiplier estimates

52:00 – Facilitators vs. correctors: why Citadel and Jane Street are thriving

55:00 – The Newtonian vs. quantum physics analogy for market scale

57:00 – GameStop, Michael Saylor, and self-liquidating vehicles

1:13:00 – Market cap concentration data and transaction cost asymmetries

1:15:00 – Why cap weighting has flipped from historically losing to structurally winning

1:17:00 – Stein's Law and the coming correction

1:18:00 – Why value investing is a "negative selection criteria" right now

1:21:00 – Where active investors can still add value: becoming facilitators

1:22:00 – Managed futures as liquidity provision and portfolio ballast

1:25:00 – Capacity constraints and closing thoughts

#MichaelGreen #PassiveInvesting #RaiseYourAverage #SimplifyAssetManagement #ETFs #IndexFunds #MarketStructure #InelasticMarketHypothesis #ActiveManagement #ValueInvesting #ManagedFutures #Macro #InvestingPodcast #StockMarket #FinancePodcast #WallStreet #PortfolioManagement #MarketBubble #AdvisorAnalyst

If you couldn't talk about performance for 10 minutes, what would you tell a client about the value you provide?

Som Seif, Founder and CEO of Purpose Investments, joins Pierre Daillie on Insight Is Capital for a candid, wide-ranging conversation that challenges advisors to confront an uncomfortable truth: the portfolio management skills that built their practices over the last four decades are rapidly becoming a commodity. Seif argues that the 60/40 portfolio, long the default solution for most Canadians, succeeded largely because of a 40-year tailwind of declining interest rates, not because it was the most resilient framework.

00:00 Introduction: If you couldn't talk about performance, what's your value?

02:00 The 40-year beta environment and why the 60/40 portfolio was never as resilient as advisors believed

06:00 Building resilient portfolios: hedging, real assets, alternative credit, and why passive fixed income is broken

10:00 Portfolio construction for scenarios, not optimal outcomes: inflation, interest rate regimes, and the role of gold and alternatives

15:00 Indexing vs. active management in fixed income today

17:00 Home country bias, global diversification, and why Canada may be at a genuine turning point

22:00 Atoms vs. bytes: why resources, energy, and infrastructure are the investment themes for the next 20 years

26:00 Canada's structural opportunity: talent, IP ownership, tax policy, and what has to change

27:00 What it actually means to put holistic, outcome-driven planning at the center of the value proposition

29:00 Portfolio management is commoditizing rapidly: the personal trainer as the model for what advisors should become

34:00 The hard part: scaling a planning-first practice and linking the plan directly to the portfolio

38:00 What statements should actually tell clients: stop showing the plumbing, start showing whether they are on track

41:00 The defined benefit pension as the gold standard client experience advisors should be recreating

45:00 The iPhone analogy: outpacing commoditization by continuously increasing your service level offering

47:00 Fee pressure, the cost of advice, and why Som believes advice fees can actually go up

50:00 One thing to do differently on Monday morning: put yourself in your client's shoes

#FinancialAdvisor #WealthManagement #InvestmentStrategy #PortfolioManagement #SomSeif #PurposeInvestments #InsightIsCapital #AdvisorAnalyst #GoalsBasedInvesting #FinancialPlanning #ETF #CanadianInvesting #FeeCompression #AdvisorValueProposition #RetirementPlanning #PortfolioResilience #AlternativeInvestments #RealAssets #FixedIncome #BehavioralFinance #FinancialIndependence #WealthBuilding #InvestmentManagement #AdvisorGrowth #ClientExperience

What if the biggest drag on your client's wealth isn't the market — it's the tax bill you never talk about?

Most advisors obsess over pre-tax returns, basis points of alpha, and fee negotiations — while silently surrendering 200 to 300 basis points a year to taxes. In this episode of Insight Is Capital, host Pierre Daillie sits down with Ray Carroll, Ph.D., CFA, Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer of the Breton Hill Quantitative Investing team at Neuberger Berman, to make the case that after-tax return is the only number that actually matters.

Carroll built one of the few tax-managed investment platforms in the world designed to work across borders — with roughly 40% of assets outside the U.S., including Canada. He explains how a decade-long bull market has quietly eroded the effectiveness of conventional tax-loss harvesting, why long-only strategies eventually run out of fuel, and how a 130/30 long-short extension strategy can triple loss-harvesting capacity while keeping market exposure at exactly 100%. He also shares the salt shaker analogy for leverage, a real-world SpaceX concentration case study, and why Canada's three-year loss carryback rule is an underused advantage for high-net-worth investors. If your clients have ever asked "is there anything we can do about my tax bill?" — this conversation has the answer.

00:00 — Introduction: The Number Your Clients Actually Keep

02:47 — Ray Carroll's Career Arc: From RBC Risk Desk to Neuberger Berman

05:13 — Tax Alpha vs. Market Alpha: The Real Drag on Wealth

09:14 — Is Tax Alpha More Reliable Than Security Selection Alpha?

10:37 — Why the Investment Case Must Always Come Before the Tax Benefit

13:11 — The Decay Problem: When Long-Only Harvesting Runs Out of Fuel

17:24 — How the 130/30 Strategy Rejuvenates Loss Harvesting

18:11 — Behavioral Finance and Why Systematic Management Wins

21:36 — Concentration Risk: The SpaceX Case Study

23:29 — When to Switch from Long-Only to Long-Short

24:49 — When Staying Long-Only Is Still the Right Answer

27:20 — Why This Must Live in Separately Managed Accounts

29:54 — The Salt Shaker Story: How to Think About Leverage

33:11 — Leverage as Risk Offset, Not Risk Amplifier

34:33 — The Plumbing Behind the Strategy: Infrastructure vs. Ideas

37:31 — Who Is the Right Client for 130/30?

39:02 — What Canadian Advisors Specifically Need to Know Under CRA Rules

41:09 — The First Step for Advisors Still on the Fence

#TaxAlpha #TaxLossHarvesting #WealthManagement #DirectIndexing #AfterTaxReturns #CapitalGains #InvestingCanada #FamilyOffice #NeubergerBerman #BretonHill #LongShortEquity #QuantitativeInvesting #PortfolioManagement #FinancialAdvisors #TaxEfficientInvesting #InsightIsCapital #AdvisorAnalyst #HighNetWorth #TaxPlanning #ConcentratedPositions #AlternativeInvesting #SmartBeta #WealthPreservation #CRAinvesting #InvestmentStrategy

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