Insight is Capital™ Podcast

A business owner can spend a lifetime building something extraordinary, and still have it quietly dismantled at death by a tax bill no one planned for.

In this episode of Cover Your Assets, hosts Pierre Daillie and Ayal Cohen are joined by Eric Orr, Advanced Case Director of Sales at IA Financial Group, for a deeply illuminating conversation about what it really takes to protect a business owner's wealth, legacy, and the continuity of everything they have built. Drawing on 25 years of experience as an advisor and advanced case specialist, Eric helps advisors see what most business owners cannot yet see for themselves: that even the most carefully structured estates, shareholder agreements, and holding companies can unravel at the moment of transition, not from poor intentions, but from the absence of liquidity when it matters most.

Eric walks through how CRA's very legal form of double taxation silently erodes business estates, why a beautifully drafted buy-sell agreement offers no protection without funding behind it, and how Canada's wealthiest families use cascading and corporate-owned insurance to move generational wealth elegantly and tax-efficiently. He also shares how advisors can open these conversations in ways that feel natural and genuinely helpful, surfacing planning gaps that business owners and their families did not know existed, and guiding them toward strategies that preserve what they have spent a lifetime creating.

Whether you work in insurance, wealth management, or both, this episode reframes advanced insurance planning not as a product conversation, but as one of the most powerful acts of stewardship an advisor can offer.

00:00 The problem no one sees coming: four liabilities, one moment

#EstatePlanning #SuccessionPlanning #LifeInsurance #WealthTransfer #BusinessOwners #TaxPlanning #FinancialAdvisors #InsuranceAdvisors #BuySellAgreement #CorporateInsurance #CanadianTax #WealthManagement #FamilyBusiness #LegacyPlanning #CRA #BusinessContinuity #InsuranceStrategy #WealthPreservation #CoverYourAssets #IAFinancialGroup

Ric Edelman was early on Bitcoin. He was right. Now he explains why the argument has changed completely.

Ric Edelman, founder of Edelman Financial Engines (one of the largest independent RIA Firms in the U.S.), the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals (DACFP) and one of the architects of modern independent wealth management, joins Pierre Daillie and Mike Philbrick on Raise Your Average for a searching, unvarnished conversation about where the digital asset story actually stands today.

00:00 – Introduction: why most Bitcoin opinions haven't been earned

01:13:00 – Final thought: crypto as the most intellectually interesting asset class alive

DACFP - Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals

Ric Edelman on Linkedin

#Bitcoin #CryptoForAdvisors #DigitalAssets #DACFP #RicEdelman #BitcoinETF #Tokenization #Stablecoins #ClarityAct #CryptoRegulation #WealthManagement #FinancialAdvisors #RIA #BlockchainAdoption #CryptoEducation #RaiseYourAverage #InvestmentAdvisors #PortfolioAllocation #BitcoinAllocation #CryptoInvesting #CBDA #FinancialPlanning #AdvisorTech #CryptoMarket #BitcoinBehavior

35% of Canadian retail investors have made a financial decision because of a finfluencer. Here's why that's the best news advisors have heard in years.

The way investors learn about money has been rewired, scroll by scroll, on platforms never built for financial advice. In this episode of Insight is Capital, Pierre Daillie sits down with Stephanie Wolfe, EVP and Head of Marketing at Global X Canada, to unpack what her team's research reveals about how Canadians actually consume financial content, and why the rise of finfluencers, short-form video, and AI verification tools may be strengthening, not eroding, advisor credibility.

Drawing on two decades of financial marketing leadership at Franklin Templeton, BlackRock, and now Global X, Stephanie explains why the trust equation has shifted from brands to people, what a Reddit AMA taught her about authenticity, and how time-crunched advisors can meet clients where they are without becoming content creators themselves. She also shares a sneak peek of unreleased research on how AI is lengthening, and reshaping, the investor decision journey.

Chapters

00:00 - The ground has shifted: finfluencers go mainstream

03:40 - Stephanie's career arc: Franklin Templeton, BlackRock, Global X

05:45 - What the research says investors actually want

10:50 - "They don't know what they don't know": the new client conversation

13:30 - The two-to-five-minute sweet spot and Dunbar's number

15:50 - Quarterly client events as trust and referral engines

20:05 - The access gap: investors who can't find an advisor

22:40 - Inside a Reddit AMA: how trust really works on platforms

27:45 - Content strategies for time-crunched advisors

31:20 - Sneak peek: new research on AI, finfluencers, and Quebec investors

36:30 - The biggest content mistake hiding in plain sight

40:10 - Deepfakes, regulation, and the next two years

44:20 - How investors really make decisions: signals, not straight lines

#Finfluencers #FinancialAdvisors #Investing #ETFs #WealthManagement #GlobalXCanada #InvestorEducation #FinancialMarketing #PersonalFinance #CanadianInvestors #AIinFinance #FinTwit #AdvisorMarketing #FinancialContent #InsightIsCapital

Three years ago, BMO Global Asset Management (BMO GAM) launched a fund that defied traditional categories. It wasn't quite equity, and it wasn't quite fixed income. Advisors weren't always sure where it fit, and that was precisely the point.

00:00 Introduction: The Two-Box Problem

Please watch to the end of the video for full disclaimers.

#StructuredProducts #AutoCallables #IncomeInvesting #YieldInvesting #BMO #BMOGlobalAssetManagement #SEYF #ConvergenceInvesting #CanadianInvesting #ETF #FixedIncomeAlternatives #WealthManagement #FinancialAdvisors #InvestmentStrategy #AlternativeIncome #PortfolioConstruction #DownsideProtection #RetirementIncome #InsightIsCapital #AdvisorAnalyst #CanadianFinance #ZCDX #ZAAA #BillBamber #PierreDaillie #FinancePodcast #CanadianMarkets

The anonymous analyst who predicted Carney's election and energy pivot, China's solar collapse, and the Iran oil bluff — before anyone else was even asking the question — pulls back the curtain on exactly how he thinks, and what's unfolding.

Pierre Daillie sits down with Doomberg, the anonymous author behind one of Substack's most widely read energy and finance publications, for a wide-ranging conversation about how to think clearly in a world saturated with noise, spin, and bad incentives. Whether you follow markets, care about where energy comes from, or simply want to understand the forces quietly reshaping the global economy, this episode is essential listening.

Doomberg opens by explaining the difference between linear and lateral thinkers — and why the ability to explore an idea you don't necessarily believe is the secret behind every major call his team has made. From predicting Mark Carney's pipeline pivot months before it happened to flagging China's solar pullback before installations fell nearly eighty percent year over year, each call came from the same discipline: build a mental model, use it to make predictions, and throw it out the moment it stops working.

The conversation then unpacks the hidden logic of global energy — why oil, gas, and coal are slowly converging toward the same price when measured by what they can actually do, and how China has spent decades quietly positioning itself to win an energy war it never officially declared. The Iran conflict, far from being a Middle East story, turns out to be a proxy move in a much larger contest over who controls the fuel that powers the modern world.

The final act connects energy to artificial intelligence in a way most people haven't considered. Every AI model, every data center, every query runs on electricity — and the race to build that infrastructure is running headlong into permitting walls, protest movements, and a regulatory system never designed for this scale. Doomberg's axiom is simple and radical: the human drive toward infinite compute will sweep every obstacle aside. The question is how fast, and who profits from what gets built along the way.

00:00 — Introduction: the calls nobody else made

#Doomberg #EnergyMarkets #AIEnergy #DataCenters #ChinaEnergy #NaturalGas #IranOil #MarkCarney #CanadaPipelines #LNG #LateralThinking #MentalModels #HowToThink #GeopoliticsExplained #EnergyGeopolitics #AIInfrastructure #ElectricityGrid #PermittingReform #InsightIsCapital #FinancePodcast #EnergyInvesting #MacroEconomics #GlobalEnergy #FutureOfAI

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