Welcome back!

This week were talking politics and pipelines. Keep reading below for our thoughts. Or tune into the podcast for a deep dive.

Pipeline MOU Update📈📉

The “Alberta-Ottawa Pipeline MOU” signals a fundamental shift in the Canadian economy from energy confrontation to energy collaboration. By linking the approval of a major infrastructure project (the pipeline) directly to decarbonization efforts (Pathways Alliance CCUS), the agreement effectively creates a “Grand Bargain” that integrates the resource economy with federal climate goals.

* Economic Certainty: The suspension of the Clean Electricity Regulations and the removal of the federal oil and gas emissions cap (replaced by TIER management) removes the regulatory “ceiling” that was stifling investment. This implies a return of foreign and domestic capital to Western Canada, as the fear of stranded assets diminishes.

* Integration of Power and Resources: The MOU explicitly links oil production with “data centres,” “nuclear strategy,” and “interties.” This implies that the Western Canadian economy will shift from purely extracting resources to becoming a complex energy hub, where bitumen production funds and fuels a transition toward nuclear energy and high-demand tech infrastructure (AI/Data centers).

* Indigenous Economic Reconciliation: With the Alberta Indigenous Opportunities Corporation (AIOC) backstopping ownership, this deal implies a massive transfer of wealth and equity to Indigenous communities, moving beyond impact benefits agreements to genuine co-ownership of multi-billion dollar infrastructure.

2. Egress Growth and Economics

The most significant economic implication is the Resolution of the Egress Crisis.

* Volume Increase: The MOU outlines a new 1 million barrel per day (bpd) pipeline to the Northwest B.C. coast. Combined with the existing Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX), this creates massive excess capacity.

* Price Differential Collapse: Historically, Western Canadian Select (WCS) traded at a steep discount to WTI because landlocked oil had nowhere to go.

* Impact: With 1 million bpd of new capacity to the Pacific, Canadian producers can bypass the US Midwest bottleneck entirely and sell directly to Asian markets at world prices (Brent/Dubai pricing).

* This effectively eliminates the “differential risk,” potentially adding $10-$15 CAD per barrel to the bottom line of every barrel produced in Alberta.

3. Impact on Oil Companies’ Economics

The economics for the Pathways Alliance members (CNRL, Cenovus, ConocoPhillips, Imperial, MEG, Suncor) will undergo a structural shift.

Capital Expenditure (CaPex) Changes

The MOU creates a “forced” but incentivized capital spending cycle. The logic is explicit: “No Pathways; no pipeline.”

* Immediate CaPex Spike (2026-2030): The six companies listed must now immediately fund and construct the massive Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) trunkline and capture facilities. They can no longer “wait and see.”

* Pipeline Financing: The notes state the pipeline is “Private sector financed.” This implies that these companies (likely forming a consortium) will also have to allocate billions toward the pipeline construction, likely front-loading costs in exchange for long-term shipping rights.

* Offsetting Factors: The extension of federal investment tax credits (ITCs) and the Alberta Carbon Capture Incentive Program (ACCIP) will absorb a significant portion (likely 50%+) of the CCUS CaPex, softening the blow to balance sheets.

Profitability Outlook

While CaPex will rise, the long-term profitability outlook is exceedingly bullish for these specific companies:

* Revenue Quality: By accessing the Pacific coast, they will realize higher prices per barrel. The revenue gain from narrowing the differential will likely eclipse the cost of the new carbon taxes.

* TIER Impact: The companies face higher operating costs due to the TIER price increasing to $130/tonne by April 2026. However, because they are building CCUS, they will generate massive “carbon credits” under this system. If they successfully lower emissions, the high carbon price turns from a penalty into a revenue stream (selling credits to other emitters).

* Production Unlocked: The concession of “No federal oil and gas emissions cap” allows these companies to increase production volumes, provided they manage the carbon intensity via CCUS.

Summary of Impacts on Specific Companies

CompanyImpact Analysis

CNRL & Cenovus

As the largest producers with significant heavy oil exposure, they stand to gain the most from the egress (pipeline) narrowing the WCS differential. They have the balance sheets to fund the required infrastructure.

Suncor & Imperial

With strong downstream (refining) assets, the pipeline allows them to export more crude to high-demand Asian markets. Imperial’s relationship with ExxonMobil (majority owner) may help leverage global technical expertise for the CCUS build-out.

MEG Energy

As a pure-play oil sands producer, MEG is highly sensitive to differentials. This deal is a “company maker” for them, drastically reducing their discount risk, though financing their share of the CaPex will be heavier relative to their size compared to CNRL.

Market Risk: The notes mention “Market Risk” regarding a private proponent. If these companies hesitate to fund the pipeline, the deal collapses (”No Pathways; no pipeline”). Therefore, investors should expect a near-term reduction in dividends/buybacks as cash is diverted to these mega-projects, with a promise of significantly higher, stable returns post-2030.

Podcast & YouTube Recommendations🎙

* Owning the next decade of ai apps: with Box CEO Aaron Levie

* BC Premier on the pipeline

* Michael Ovitz the founder of CAA:

Best Links of The Week🔮

* “A late November rally propelled stocks near record highs, with investor optimism over a potential Federal Reserve interest-rate cut in December helping reverse the effects of an earlier midmonth market slump. The S&P 500 rose 0.5% on Friday, pushing it near a record set in late October and helping the index eke out a 0.1% monthly gain. The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 0.6% on the day, finishing the month with a 0.3% gain. The tech-heavy Nasdaq, however, registered its first monthly loss since March, falling 1.5% after a choppy period spurred by fears of an artificial-intelligence bubble. The index added about 0.7% Friday.” Source: WSJ

* “Consumers spent record amounts online on Black Friday, but it is less clear how traditional retail stores did on the official kickoff of the peak holiday shopping season, with one tracking company showing a slight increase in foot traffic and another showing the big drop. Adobe, which studies Adobe Analytics date culled from over 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, reported that U.S. ecommerce sales reached a record $11.8 billion online on Black Friday, up 9.1% year-over-year. That exceeded Adobe’s forecast of 8.3% ecommerce growth on Black Friday.” Source: Forbes

* “OpenAI’s huge early lead in the race to dominate artificial intelligence is under the greatest pressure since ChatGPT’s launch, as rivals Google and Anthropic gain ground in the cutting-edge technology. Three years on from the debut of its popular chatbot, the $500bn start-up is grappling with the reality of soaring data centre costs, the technical challenges of remaining at the frontier of AI and the constant battle to retain key talent. It is also facing a resurgent Google, with the release last week of Gemini 3, Google’s latest large language model, which is considered to have leapfrogged OpenAI’s GPT-5 and achieved gains from the model training process that have eluded OpenAI in recent months.” Source: FT

* “OPEC+ countries agreed to maintain group-wide oil output quotas for 2026 in a meeting on Sunday, and also agreed on a mechanism to assess members’ maximum oil production capacity, OPEC said in a statement. Eight OPEC+ countries, holding a separate meeting on Sunday, also have an agreement in principle to maintain a pause in their output hikes for the first quarter of 2026.” Source: CNBC

Listen on Apple, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.

Market Update📈📉

Quick Hits:

* Asset Class Reversal: We are witnessing a historical anomaly. Gold (+54%) is currently the best-performing major asset of 2025, while Bitcoin (-1%) sits as the worst. This is the direct inverse of 2013 and a dynamic we haven’t seen before in a calendar year.

* S&P 500 Technicals: The S&P 500 closed below its 50-day moving average for the first time since April 30, officially ending the 5th longest uptrend since 1950.

* Institutional Signal: despite Bitcoin’s price lag, institutional adoption is heating up. Harvard’s endowment reported in its Q3 13F filings that the iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) is now its largest position and biggest increase—a significant stamp of approval from the endowment world.

The AI “Non-Bubble” and Gemini 3

The narrative regarding Artificial Intelligence has shifted fundamentally over the last few weeks. We are moving from a phase of “inevitable euphoria” to a phase of “verification.”

1. The “Non-Bubble” Disappointment Ironically, both AI bulls and bears are disappointed. Bulls wanted a parabolic, “melt-up” bubble (think 1997-1999) to maximize short-term gains. Bears wanted a bubble so it would burst. Instead, we are in a “non-bubble”: valuations are reasonable (NVDA ~20x), margins are rich, and we are early in the supercycle.

2. The Catalyst: “Sam’s Splurge” (SS) The turning point was Sam Altman’s $1.4T infrastructure plan. Instead of fueling excitement, this massive capital requirement opened “Pandora’s Box,” shifting investor sentiment from blind optimism to scrutiny.

* Credit Risk: The sheer scale of the plan (nearly the size of the private credit market) forced lenders to reprice AI-linked risk. We saw this immediately in widening CDS spreads for Oracle and Coreweave.

* Government & Feasibility: The plan invited government scrutiny regarding energy grids, water usage, and land rights. It dragged long-term risks (post-2028) into the present day.

* Too Big to Fail: The market realized that OpenAI is no longer just a startup; it is a systemic risk. If they fail to execute on $1.4T, they drag the ecosystem down with them.

3. The Market Reaction: BSS vs. ASS We are moving from BSS (Before Sam’s Splurge) to ASS (After Sam’s Splurge).

* Profitability over Narrative: As uncertainty rises, the market is favoring profitability. Companies with tangible earnings (Memory/DRAM) are outperforming, while pure narrative stocks (Nuclear, Quantum) are rolling over.

* The “Giddy” Phase is Over: The straight-line ascent is likely done. We are entering a healthier, more mature phase where stock-picking, fundamentals, and idiosyncrasies matter more than sector-wide hype.

Bottom Line: The AI trade isn’t broken; it is simply growing up.

This is supported by todays release of Gemini 3:

The long-awaited Gemini 3 finally launched yesterday, and the entire industry seemed to have been holding its breath for it. Based on the benchmarks released so far, the model largely meets the high expectations that had built up beforehand. It resets records across multiple mainstream leaderboards, especially in long-horizon reasoning, native multimodal alignment, and cross-modality inference. On many benchmarks the performance gap over competitors is not small, rekindling optimism that large models may genuinely break through long-chain task complexity and real-world application depth. These capabilities are precisely where the next stage of AI deployment will happen—far beyond simple chat or text generation.

What’s interesting is that Gemini 3’s improvement doesn’t come from fancy RL tricks or alignment methods, but almost entirely from stronger pre-training. Multiple sources, including Google employees, confirmed this point: this round of progress is, quite literally, “built on brute-force compute.”

Podcast & YouTube Recommendations🎙

* Plain English with a fun episode on Ai and Work:

* The BG2 Podcast Mentioned in the podcast:

Best Links of The Week🔮

* Warren Buffetts final letter to shareholders. Enjoy Retirement GOAT - Berkshire

* Felix Stocker has a nice essay on mining and society. Which sounds like the topic of the one humanities class a geological engineering major would grudgingly sit through, but which is actually a pretty pivotal question: many modern conveniences—especially including the batteries, windmills, electric motors, and solar panels we use to reduce our reliance on emissions-heavy sources—require inputs that necessarily have to be dug up out of the ground, often in an environmentally-destructive way. When there’s a debate over a mine, it’s not so much big business versus the environment as it is environmentalism versus climate change and energy security

* Mark Humphries in Generative Historyhas a fascinating piece on Gemini decoding centuries-old handwritten records in a very human-like way, by using context clues in the document to infer missing information. In a sense, the LLM’s transcription was more than 100% correct, because it identified and fixed an ambiguity in the historical record (even expert human readers will occasionally miss something like this). One of the unique axes on which models perform well is that they don’t get bored the way a person would, and are willing to check their work to make sure it’s logically consistent even when the task is just to transcribe text.

* And on a similar note, this Dwarkesh Patel and Dylan Patel interview with Satya Nadella has an interesting side note on legibility: Nadella notes that AI makes it easier to move information from an Excel file into a real database, and that means it’s easier to join across different datasets. Cheap determinism is a complement to more flexible but uncertain LLMs. Future historians will have a much easier time trawling through historical data, at least as long as someone pays to store it.

Listen on Apple, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.

Budget Update📈📉

Welcome back.

It was a busy week in Canadian political news. We had multiple floor crossings and a brand new Canadian budget to review. Why does this matter?

The Canadian budget reveals the priorities, trade offs, and a growing deficit that continues to shape future policy in our country.

A great infographic from Canoe financial:

Revenue. Where it comes from?

* The federal government expects to collect about $507 billion in revenue in 2025 to 2026. The three biggest contributors are:

Personal income tax

* The largest funding source by far, at roughly $238 billion. Canadians themselves are the primary engine of the budget, contributing almost half of every dollar the government spends.

Corporate income tax

* Businesses contribute $97 billion, the second largest source.

Goods and Services Tax (GST)

* Consumption drives $54 billion through the GST.

Other revenue sources include excise taxes, employment insurance premiums, enterprise Crown corporations, and investment returns. But taken together, the story remains simple: personal and corporate income taxes fund most federal spending.When revenues fall short of planned spending, the gap is filled with borrowing. In Budget 2025, that gap is large.Spending. Where the money goes.

* Planned spending totals about $585 billion including actuarial losses, with a focus on three major areas:

Individual Supports:$144 billion in major transfers to persons

* Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement: $83 billion

* Employment Insurance benefits: $30 billion

* Canada Child Benefit: $30 billion

These programs represent direct cash support to households. They are predictable, indexed, and politically durable.Support for provinces and municipalities:$111 billion through transfers

* Canada Health Transfer: $57 billion

* Canada Social Transfer: $19 billion

* Equalization and territorial financing: $29 billion

Health care remains the single biggest provincial transfer. Growth in this category continues to exceed revenue growth.Direct program spending and operations:$266 billion on programs and government operations

* Indigenous reconciliation and services: $44 billion

* Infrastructure and housing initiatives: $27 billion

* Climate and natural resource programs: $18 billion

* International assistance: $20 billion

* Defence and security: $60 billion combined

This is where most new policy announcements appear. Key initiatives:

* Housing and infrastructure to address affordability pressures

* Defence modernization and procurement cycles

* Indigenous reconciliation funding commitments

* Climate related and natural resource transition programs

These areas are increasingly multi year and structural, not one time line items.The deficit.Even with more than half a trillion in revenue, expenses are rising faster.

* Deficit before actuarial losses: about $73 billion

* Net actuarial adjustments: about $5 billion

* Final projected deficit: $78 billion

Borrowing fills the gap and adds to debt servicing costs. Public debt charges are now $56 billion, making interest the fifth largest line item in the entire budget. Higher rates are translating into higher carrying costs on federal debt.

For our thoughts on this - tune into the pod.

Podcast & YouTube Recommendations🎙

* Daniel Yergin on Energys Transition:

* Invest Like The Best:

Best Links of The Week🔮

* Boaz Barak on the counterintuitive economics of AI. This is a very good piece, that thinks clearly about bottlenecks: if we automate lots of labor, and that makes us richer, that makes the remaining labor much more valuable. But AI messes up the classic growth equation, because it’s a case where capital is increasingly fungible with labor. We’ll need a whole new formula to even describe what growth looks like in an AI-heavy economy.

* Richard Dewey et. al. trained a model to play a simplified version of liar’s poker via self-play, and then pitted it against experienced human player. They also had it play against LLMs (one interesting note there is that the LLMs tend to play cautiously; they speculate that part of what’s happening is that so much poker advice for beginners suggests folding more often, and that’s carrying over to this domain). Liar’s poker turns out to be a surprisingly complicated game with a vast number end states, so playing it means doing a tiny bit of deterministic reasoning and accumulating an arsenal of nested heuristics—which is a good description of a lot of machine learning.

* “For months, a small company in San Francisco has been pursuing a secretive project: the birth of a genetically engineered baby. Backed by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and his husband, along with Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong, the startup—called Preventive—has been quietly preparing what would amount to a biological first. They are working toward creating a child born from an embryo edited to prevent a hereditary disease. In recent months, executives at the company privately said a couple with a genetic disease had been identified who was interested in participating.” Source: WSJ

* Perplexity to pay Snap 400mm to integrate their AI model into their search - ““The deal gives Perplexity exposure to more than 940 million Snapchat users, who will get answers from its AI engine when they ask questions to the company’s My AI chatbot.”

“The new feature will be integrated into the app’s interface early next year. Snap said it will start recording revenue from this deal in 2026.”Source: Techcrunch

Quick note on podcast cadence: This coming Friday we will have a special podcast release talking about the Canadian Budget. Tune in on LinkedIn if you want to hear our views.

Markets

Good, some bad, and a little bit of ugly

We’re getting a lot of emails and calls about whether were due for a bear market.

And It’s always important to bring back the conversation to time horizon.

Some folks are short term swing traders... Most are long-term investors. Many find themselves somewhere in between.

What I want to remind everyone of today is that the longer your timeframe is, the more important asset trends become. And one thing we know for sure, asset prices trend.

Right now, the most bullish data on the board is that long-term trends remain firmly intact across stock markets around the world — not just in the U.S. and Canada.

This is the good: The S&P500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, Nasdaq100, TSX and Russell 2000 Small-cap Indexes all finished October with their highest monthly closes on record.

Europe, Japan, China, Latin America, and London all went out at new highs for the cycle as well.

This isn’t just a U.S. technology bull market.

Consolidation continuation:

Back in early October, we talked about what this market correction should feel like — and the traffic jam analogy still fits perfectly.

This is the bad part of the current environment: There’s simply more supply than demand for stocks at these levels. And much of that can be explained by a historical equity run up from the April lows.

In other words, there are still plenty of investors looking to sell into strength, no matter how strong the longer-term trend remains.

The best visual of this came to my inbox curtsy of Trend Labs:

This chart of the small-cap index remains the cleanest visual of overhead supply in today’s market — and it’s also one of the most important gauges of market breadth.

If the Russell 2000 is in an uptrend, you probably don’t have a breadth problem.

The percentage of stocks on the NYSE that are above their 200-day moving average (in other words, in uptrends), peaked back on September 11th.

Whats happening with market leadership?

The good news is that the worst part about this market can easily be corrected with one day of action, AND it falls within the context of a strong uptrend.

So even the ugly here needs to be viewed within the context of the current cycle.

This is a chart of the First Trust Nasdaq-100 Equal-Weighted Index Fund (QQEW) failing to hold on to its breakout from last week.

Momentum is also putting in a bearish divergence, which doesn’t help the situation:

This index gives each of the 100 stocks an equal weighting, rather than the larger companies representing a larger percentage of the overall index, like the market-cap weighted Nasdaq-100 (QQQ).

The longer the equal-weight Nasdaq-100 (QQEW) is below 144, the longer this correction will last. Same with the Russell 2000 Index (IWM).

It doesn’t mean the market is going to crash, or that we’re beginning some kind of epic bear market. It’s just the same ongoing correction that we’ve been talking about for over a month.

Recap:

It’s a bull market, at the end of the day.

So even though this post is mostly about the bad, the ugly, and the wave of selling pressure we’ve seen in recent weeks, the bigger picture remains the same: We’re still in a powerful uptrend, and there’s little to no evidence that it’s over.

Sector rotation is the lifeblood of a bull market. We know this — and we keep seeing it.

Healthcare was the worst sector. Then it became the best.

Energy was the worst, and now it’s heating up again.

What will come of Q4?

Podcast & YouTube Recommendations🎙

* Gavin Baker on Ai, technology business models

* It’s still so early! A16Z Founding partners talk about the current state of Ai:

Best Links of The Week🔮

* “Google is about to release Gemini 3 and my smart friends tell me it is expected to be better than the de facto leader in AI coding - Claude from Anthropic. That means that the top two AI coding products by far will have both been trained using TPUs (Google’s chip), not GPU’s (Nvidia). On top of the data they own from Android, YouTube, Gmail, Maps etc…I think the world is realizing that Google may have an edge” Here comes Google - Howard Lindzon

* “Advanced Micro Devices, the main contender to Nvidia in the artificial intelligence chip market, failed to impress investors with its revenue forecast after an eye-popping rally sent expectations soaring. Fourth-quarter revenue will be roughly $9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Tuesday. Though analysts had estimated $9.2 billion on average, some projections ranged as high as $9.9 billion. Investors have bet heavily on AMD following blockbuster agreements with OpenAI and Oracle, which plan to use the company’s chips in their build-out of artificial intelligence computing. The hope is that AMD can finally crack Nvidia’s dominance in the AI processor market.” Source: Bloomberg

* “WhatsApp announced on Tuesday that it’s launching an Apple Watch companion app. For the first time, WhatsApp users will be able to use their Apple Watch to get call notifications, read full messages, and record and send voice messages.” Source: TechCrunch

TLDR: Listen on Apple, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.

Market Update📈📉

Welcome back.

The indexes barely sneezed last week, and the high-momentum flyers from quantum computing, nuclear, space, drones, rare earth metals, robots, crypto, and AI pulled back 10-40%. The price action in momentum stocks is often a precursor of what might happen in the general market. Timing it is the tricky part as sector rotations could continue to keep the indexes near their all-time highs.

The market is currently in a range-bound, choppy mode. In such an environment, breakouts don’t work for more than a day or two and often lead to a reversal. Breakdowns don’t last too long either, as the dips near support levels are getting bought. The market is digesting its recent gains and looking for new catalysts. They are right around the corner.

The new earnings season has just begun. Morgan Stanley crushed estimates and gapped up. Then, lending troubles in select regional banks brought down the entire financial sector, and Morgan Stanley gave back its gap. American Express also reported strong results, gapped up, and finished strongly.

It is a scalper’s tape for nimble traders for the time being, where trading less and focusing on earnings movers makes sense until the next clear swing move.

Pocket Lobbyist Insights:

Budget Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a speech in advance of the forthcoming November 4 federal budget outlining his government’s priorities.

Auto alarms: Tariff wars continue–internally with Stellantis and GM decisions to move operations to the U.S., as well as externally with President Trump saying he has “terminated” trade talks with Canada after anti-tariff ads were taken out by Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

Foreign policy: Carney is travelling to South Korea for the APEC summit next week and might meet with President Xi, though that meeting is yet to be confirmed publicly. President Trump will be there and is meeting with Xi.

Crime crackdown: Bail reform through Bail and Sentencing Reform Act introduces over 80 clauses of targeted changes to the bail and sentencing framework in the Criminal Code.

Podcast & YouTube Recommendations🎙

* Historical Cycles: History shows these massive transformations happen in ~80-year cycles. Each cycle involves “watching an old system being essentially dismantled... at the same time as we’re taking off on these new technologies to build the next systems”

* The U.S.’s Self-Inflicted Challenge - Chinese Rare earths leverage and the shocking comparables across multiple industries in Canada:

China’s announcements last week should have the same effect on the U.S.: we need to always act with the understanding that (1) we have a critical dependency on China that is particularly important to our tech industry and (2) that China is willing to leverage that dependency.

Best Links of The Week🔮

* “The six largest U.S. banks collectively earned nearly $41 billion in the third quarter, a 19% increase from the previous year. Bankers express unease about the future despite strong third-quarter profits, healthy consumer spending and low debt delinquencies. Concerns include a cooling job market, elevated inflation and the federal government shutdown’s potential economic impact.” Source: WSJ

* “The U.S. has to use industrial policy to compete against nonmarket economies like China, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC. The Trump administration will set price floors across a range of strategic industries to combat Beijing, Bessent said. The administration could take equity stakes in more companies in the wake of China’s new restrictions on rare earth exports, he said.” Source: CNBC

* “United Airlines posted higher-than-expected earnings for the third quarter but revenue that missed Wall Street’s estimates. The carrier boosted capacity more than 7% in the third quarter while unit sales fell for both domestic and international travel. United said it expects an adjusted-earnings forecast of $3 to $3.50 a share in the fourth quarter.” Source: CNBC

* From Hodinkee: “On this episode of The Business Of Watches Podcast, we catch up with Antoine Pin, the Chief Executive Officer of Tag Heuer, who is having quite a year. The brand is in the first season of a new decade-long deal to be the official timekeeping sponsor of Formula 1. It’s a high-profile, multi-brand agreement that, if executed correctly, could launch Tag Heuer to a whole new level of visibility. But it also comes at a challenging time for the global economy and the watch industry in general, as soaring input costs, a strong Swiss franc, and U.S. tariffs on Swiss goods take a toll on margins and confidence.” You can listen to the podcast or read a transcript of the interview here on Hodinkee.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone,

If you don’t have any video of your family spending time together over the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday, give Sora a try.

Listen on Apple, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.

Market Update📈📉

Okay, so while I’m having my philosophical moment about AI, the markets have been telling their own, more straightforward story. Let’s look at the numbers for the last quarter.

September was a pretty good month for stocks, but you had to be in the right places. The S&P 500 was up about three and a half percent. But get this—nearly 70% of that gain came from a handful of Big Tech companies. So if you weren’t in tech, you probably felt a little left out.

The other interesting trend is that capital seems to be flowing into Emerging Markets, which had a fantastic month, up over 7%. At the same time, money is trickling out of Europe. It’s a bit of a rotation we’re keeping our eye on.

And for the first time in a while, US small-cap stocks actually beat large-caps in the third quarter. That’s a sign that the rally might be broadening out a little bit, which is a healthy thing to see.

What Breaks This Market Rally?

It all comes back to the trillion-dollar AI question: Are we in a bubble?

The giants—Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta—they’re going to be fine. They are spending an eye-watering amount of money on AI data centers, but they can afford it. It’s like a “tails I win, heads I don’t lose too badly” situation for them. That infrastructure will eventually pay off.

The real risk, if this bubble pops, is for the companies that sell the shovels in this gold rush. Think NVIDIA, Oracle, and all the other companies in the AI supply chain. They would be in for a really tough time.

I’m watching for three things that could be the “uh-oh” moment:

* AI progress hits a wall. We realize AGI isn’t coming next year, and companies ask, “Why are we spending $10 billion for a model that’s only 5% better?”

* Supply finally overtakes demand. For two years we’ve heard “we can’t get enough chips!” What happens when everyone has built their data centers and suddenly there’s more than enough supply to go around? That’s when the panic stops.

* The free money dries up. A few of those AI startups with cool demos but no actual business model run out of cash, and investors get spooked.

Podcast & YouTube Recommendations🎙

Casey Handmer on the Dwarkesh Patel Podcast - I’ve listened 5 times.

Ray Dalio at GEF:

Best Links of The Week🔮

* “OpenAI’s short-form artificial intelligence video app Sora hit 1 million downloads less than five days after its launch in late September... Bill Peebles, head of Sora at OpenAI, shared the milestone in a post on X late Wednesday. He said Sora reached 1 million downloads even faster than ChatGPT, the company’s popular AI chatbot that supports 800 million weekly active users. Sora allows users to generate short videos for free by typing in a prompt.” Source: CNBC

* “China has tightened its controls on rare earth exports ahead of an expected meeting between President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump. Shares of U.S. rare earth and critical mineral miners surged as the market speculates on further investment in the industry by the White House. The Trump administration has taken equity stakes in several miners this year to stand up a domestic supply chain against China.” Source: CNBC

* Last week saw some notable developments on the SLM side that is worth noting. Venturebeat explains in “Samsung AI researcher’s new, open reasoning model TRM outperforms models 10,000X larger — on specific problems”: “The trend of AI researchers developing new, small open source generative models that outperform far larger, proprietary peers continued this week with yet another staggering advancement.”

“Alexia Jolicoeur-Martineau, Senior AI Researcher at Samsung’s Advanced​ Institute of Technology (SAIT) in Montreal, Canada,​ has introduced the Tiny Recursion Model (TRM) — a neural network so small it contains just 7 million parameters (internal model settings), yet it competes with or surpasses cutting-edge language models 10,000 times larger in terms of their parameter count, including OpenAI’s o3-mini and Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro, on some of the toughest reasoning benchmarks in AI research.” - Venturebeat

TLDR: The single biggest question on everyone's mind is: Are we in an AI bubble?

Listen in podcast app and follow below for the podcast topic arc.

* Market update

* Recommendations and Links

Listen on Apple, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.

Market Update📈📉

Now, history is our best guide here. Think about the great capital cycles of the past. The railroads in the 1840s had a simple feedback loop: the government gave them land, they announced a route, speculators drove up land prices, proving the "territorial development" thesis and fueling more railroad construction. Boom. The gilded age.

Then came the telecom bubble of the '90s. The loop was even faster. A company announced a network buildout, their stock price soared on the promise of infinite internet traffic, and they'd use that soaring stock to raise more money to build more networks. Higher stock prices validated the spending.

So, what about today's AI buildout? The key idea is that more compute and more data lead to better models, unlocking a new frontier.

But when you look closely, the one thing we're missing is that hyper-speculative feedback loop seen in past bubbles.

We're not quite there... yet.

The Real Bottleneck

The real story isn't just about chips; it's about the picks and shovels. This AI capital cycle is a three-legged stool: Compute, Data Centers, and the most critical leg, Power.

And that's where the lag is. While a chip cycle might be about 12 months, building a data center takes years. Building a new power plant to run it? That takes even longer. We're seeing companies like GE Vernova booking power plant slots for 2027 and 2028.

This makes power the "golden screw" – the one critical piece that holds everything up. Just like tiny, cheap microcontrollers were the bottleneck for the auto industry a few years ago, massive power plants are the bottleneck for AI today. The industry's eyes are shifting from chips to data centers and power grids, and that's where you'll see the first signs of oversupply when the cycle eventually turns.

The Market's Dilemma

Now, this massive, multi-year buildout is happening against a very confusing economic backdrop.

Last week, Fed Chair Powell basically admitted the FOMC is torn. They're stuck between stubbornly high inflation and a weakening labor market.

The new "Dot Plot," which shows where committee members think rates will be, is all over the place. For 2026, forecasts range from a rate hike to seven more cuts. That's not a consensus; that's a shrug.

But the market? It sees things very differently.

Fed Funds Futures are pricing in an 80% chance of two more rate cuts this year. This is the classic

"bad economic news is good for stocks" setup, because it means cheaper money is on the way.

This dynamic is what's fueling Big Tech.

Companies like Nvidia, Microsoft, and Google are crushing the S&P 500 because they have both a powerful secular growth story in AI and the market betting on lower rates to fund that growth.

So the central tension right now is this:

a massive, long-term AI capital buildout, which desperately needs cheap capital, is running headfirst into a Federal Reserve that is openly broadcasting its own uncertainty.

The big question is, which force wins? Can the AI narrative continue to power the market higher, or will the economic reality of a divided Fed finally cool things down?

Pocket Lobbyist Insights:

* Carney said the Israeli government is "working methodically to prevent the prospect of a Palestinian state from ever being established” at the UN General Assembly on Monday afternoon.

* Trump–in his UN General Assembly Speech–critical of Europe; a country Canada has decided it will more closely ally with economically to offset tariff disputes.

* 25 Republican members of Congress and Senators are calling on Carney to ‘reconsider’ his government’s decision.

* Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate foreign commerce, though the President negotiates trade agreements; Congress has an up/down vote (no amendments with limited debate) on implementing the bill.

* Canada recognizing Palestinian statehood and potential blowback from the Trump administration on tariff negotiations (in addition to United Kingdom, Australia and Portugal).

Best Links of The Week🔮

* “Plans for massive AI investments often lead to larger increases in market value for the companies making the investments. Investors are clamoring for companies spending big on AI, with companies like Nvidia and Alibaba seeing large increases in market value after announcing AI investment plans. The market enthusiasm for AI investments has added significant value to companies like Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon, with their market capitalization boosted by about $1.8 trillion this year.” Source: Bloomberg

* “Microsoft is bringing Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 AI models to its Microsoft 365 Copilot today. It’s a big move that expands model choice beyond just OpenAI’s range of models in Microsoft 365 Copilot, and it will allow Microsoft’s customers to access Anthropic models in Researcher and Microsoft Copilot Studio.” Source: The Verge

* “Instagram has reached 3 billion monthly users and is changing its home screen navigation bar to highlight private messaging and Reels. The app is running tests, including one in India where the app will open directly into Reels, and another that lets users influence their content algorithm by selecting or hiding topics. The changes are part of a broader effort to leverage Instagram's most popular features, with private messaging and video watching being the most popular ways people use the app.” Source: Bloomberg

* The Fed cut rates from the Transcript “At today’s meeting, the committee decided to lower the target range for the federal‑funds rate by a quarter percentage point to 4 to 4 ¼ percent, and to continue reducing the size of our balance sheet.” – Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell

I have a very exciting announcement for our subscribers.

Starting this week I will be releasing a bi-weekly podcast with my good friend Melissa Caouette, Founder of Pocket Lobbyist and Principal at MC Consulting.

subscribe here

We will be bringing you a regular diet of Canadian market and political insights to help you better navigate your business and portfolio of investments.

On to the Market Update:

As I always say, if you must panic… panic first.

At close on friday, the $VIX was sitting in the $14 range.

I do not make market ‘top’ or ‘bottom’ calls. That would be silly.

However, a few times a year the market starts to scream - “be careful and/or take some extra risk.” Once or twice a year when the $VIX spikes to 30 we get an opportunity to hold our noses and buy stocks. And during those times, I am generally looking to add stocks rather than sell them…

There has been three opportunities since 2008 where the $VIX spiked above 60.

* The Great Financial Crisis of 2008

* March 2020 Covid Shutdown

* Liberation Day Tariffs of April 2025.

On it’s own, a $VIX 14-16 means very little.

If you added stocks when the $VIX was 60, you have been rewarded as the $VIX calmed back down the last four months. A low $VIX does not mean I want to sell stocks, but it is the reward for buying the spike in March and a much better moment to ‘panic’ if you must sell.

Here’s a list of… interesting things that are concerning me.

* For some reason people are chasing/piling into Cathie Woods ETF’s again at record pace…

It’s not just that degenerates still trust Cathie after years of awful returns…but penny stock trading has been accounting for 30 percent of market volume throughout this summer. Summers may just be the new season for extra degeneracy as the institutions vacay.

* Next up… Chamath is floating another SPAC. He thinks it’s ok because he calls the market a ‘casino’(never mind his horrendous track record).

Chamath KNOWS that YOU KNOW that he is a grifter and he can still do this and the SEC does not care.

This is the darkside of the degenerate economy. Do not expect guardrails or a bailout.

The warning signs are accumulating.

* Lastly, let’s take one quick look at the mechanics of growth and expectations one should consider. Robinhood has had the run of a lifetime. Based on the numbers, it has made total sense. But, can the background that helped them post these numbers continue?

Decoding the Jackson Hole Message and NonFarm Payrolls: Beyond the Hawkish Headlines

The dust has settled on Fed Chair Powell's highly anticipated speech at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium. While initial reactions were mixed, a closer look at the text reveals a more nuanced and ultimately dovish stance than many are reporting.

The speech was not a "pounding the table" moment. No new policy was made, and it was certainly not a policy mistake—the FOMC meeting is still weeks away.

Here’s a pragmatic breakdown of the key takeaways and what they signal for the path ahead.

1. The Fed's Core Message: A Clear Nod to the Jobs Mandate

Instead of a hawkish warning, Powell's concluding remarks pointed directly toward a policy adjustment, emphasizing the Fed's concern for its employment mandate. His final line before discussing the new consensus statement was pivotal:

"Nonetheless, with policy in restrictive territory, the baseline outlook and the shifting balance of risks may warrant adjusting our policy stance."

This language signals a clear predisposition to ease policy, contingent on incoming data. The market reaction confirmed this, with the probability of a September rate cut ending the week largely where it started (around 83%), despite some intra-day volatility.

2. The Path to a September Rate Cut

The message from the Fed is clear: policy is data-dependent, but the bar for not cutting rates is now extremely high. A rate cut in September seems to be the baseline scenario unless the next cycle of data comes in exceptionally hot across the board.

The Fed will cut rates in September unless we see a combination of:

* Strong employment data (in all its forms).

* Hot inflation reports (CPI, PPI, and Import Prices) in the week before the meeting.

Barring this "fire hot" scenario, the Fed appears poised to act.

3. Debunking the 2% Inflation Target Myth

A significant misinterpretation circulating is that the Fed has abandoned its 2% inflation target. This is incorrect. The FOMC's new consensus statement is about flexibility, not abandonment.

* What Changed: The framework moved away from rigid "inflation averaging" and now allows for more flexibility to tolerate inflation above 2% specifically when the labor market is weak.

* What Didn't Change: The official target remains 2%. The speech did not confirm a commitment to permanently run inflation hot or an abandonment of the target altogether. It's a strategic shift to avoid tightening policy prematurely during a potential downturn.

Looking Ahead: My Perspective

I believe the Fed is slowly and steadily moving toward a view that is more cautious about the real economy and less concerned about persistent inflation. This speech was another step in that direction and the market is pricing in 3 cuts to end this year. and 2 more in 2026.

While I remain critical of the Fed's long-term balance sheet policy, which has contributed to asset inflation, the near-term outlook for monetary policy is leaning dovish. A potential cut is not a policy mistake; it's a pragmatic adjustment to a shifting balance of risks.

The key now is the data. If it doesn't show significant re-acceleration, the Fed has given itself the green light to begin easing.

What was your main takeaway from Jackson Hole? Do you believe a September cut is locked in for this week?

#JacksonHole #FederalReserve #JeromePowell #MonetaryPolicy #Economics #Inflation #InterestRates #MarketOutlook #Finance #Investing

Best Links of The Week🔮:

* Oracle’s move off OpenAI Contracts: Oracle (48), led by founder Larry Ellison (81), added half of ten year old OpenAI’s $500 billion recent valuation this week in two days. All over its erupting AI Data Center Building revenue backlog from its $300 billion OpenAI Stargate buildout deal. Source: Bloomberg

* Apple continues to have a unique set of advantages vs its peers in this AI Tech Wave. Especially as AI capabilities truly ramp up across their ecosystem. Won’t have to squint hard to find them. Apple is poised to deliver bottom up AI applications and services to billions in the months ahead. With a laser focus on Design in the hardware and software. - Apple Product Launch Source: Bloomberg

* “A rally that put stocks on the brink of all-time highs sputtered and bond yields rose as euphoria around Federal Reserve rate cuts eased just days ahead of a key inflation reading... Traders are bracing for a not-so-friendly price reading later this week. The Fed’s preferred gauge of underlying inflation probably ticked higher last month, with the personal consumption expenditures price index excluding food and energy rising 2.9% from a year ago. That would be fastest annual pace in five months.” Source: Bloomberg

* “Banks are pushing to change new US stable coin rules over fears they will spark trillions of dollars’ worth of outflows, underlining growing competition between Wall Street and the [virtual] currency industry. Banking lobbies including the American Bankers Association, the Bank Policy Institute and the Consumer Bankers Association last week warned lawmakers of a “loophole” in regulation that will let some [virtual currency] exchanges indirectly pay interest to stable coin holders.” Source: FT

* “Elon Musk’s artificial-intelligence startup xAI sued Apple and OpenAI Monday, alleging the companies are illegally thwarting competition for AI companies. The lawsuit says the iPhone-maker’s partnership with OpenAI makes the startup’s ChatGPT the “only generative AI chatbot that benefits from billions of user prompts originating from hundreds of millions of iPhones.” That enables OpenAI to use the prompts and feedback to improve its model, a significant advantage, according to the complaint. The suit also says Apple is deprioritizing the apps of competing chatbots in its App Store rankings.” Source: WSJ

HAVEN And The Brothers Who Built A Global Sanctuary For Menswear

In the global lexicon of high fashion, certain cities are spoken with reverence:

Paris, Milan, Tokyo, New York.

Edmonton, Alberta, is not typically on that list. Yet, it is from this industrial prairie city that one of the world's most respected and technically advanced menswear brands emerged. HAVEN.

At the heart of this story are brothers Daniel and Arthur Chmielewski. They are not fashion scions or design school prodigies. Instead, they are pragmatic problem-solvers who left careers in the finance to pursue a shared passion, one rooted in the grassroots authenticity of street culture. Their journey is a testament to a different kind of success—one built on necessity, discipline, and an unwavering commitment to quality.

Founders' Background

Daniel and Arthur Chmielewski grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, a city more known for its oil industry and harsh winters than its fashion scene. Their father, a contractor, instilled in them a "workmanlike approach" to any task, an ethos that would later define their business philosophy and even the physical construction of their first store, which they built themselves with the help of their father and friends.

While their day jobs were in finance, their passion lay elsewhere. The brothers were deeply steeped in "street culture from a grassroots level”. They were particularly drawn to Japanese brands, which they admired for executing product on "a whole 'nother level from a quality standpoint". This appreciation for superior craftsmanship and meticulous design, so different from the mass-market clothing available in Canada at the time, would become a cornerstone of their future enterprise.

The "HAVEN Filter"

The guiding principle behind every product curated or created by HAVEN. This ethos is not an abstract marketing concept but a tangible framework. It is a commitment to purposeful design where function, utility, and performance are paramount.

Defining the Philosophy:

The "HAVEN filter" prioritizes a set of quintessentially Canadian values:

* purposeful,

* utilitarian,

* functional, and

* performance-driven.

The brand's mission is to create "functional everyday clothing" that actively improves the wearer's comfort, performance, and utility in their daily life. This philosophy extends beyond their in-house label to the meticulous curation of other brands they carry. Daniel Chmielewski champions the idea of making conscious choices about consumption, advocating for "exceptional quality and timeless design" over fleeting trends. The goal is to build products that remove barriers, allowing individuals to do more without having to think about what they are wearing.

Digital by Necessity:

While HAVEN's design philosophy was forged by its physical environment, its commercial success was seemingly secured in the digital realm. The brand's early and aggressive adoption of e-commerce was not a calculated strategic move into a burgeoning market, but a crucial pivot born from existential necessity.

In the mid-2000s, when e-commerce was still in its relative infancy, the HAVEN web shop and blog became a vital portal for a global community of enthusiasts. It served as a primary, and often exclusive, North American source for cult-status Japanese brands like NEIGHBORHOOD and WTAPS.

This digital-first strategy allowed HAVEN to cultivate a loyal customer base far beyond the borders of Alberta. By the time they were ready to expand physically to Eastern Canada, their reputation had preceded them. The opening of their Toronto store was met with a pre-existing clientele built entirely through online orders, validating their belief that a void existed in the market for their curated retail experience.

Content as a Cornerstone:

Daniel recognized early that a successful online presence required more than just a transactional platform. He understood that retail is about "storytelling and building relationships with customers".

HAVEN launched its "Intelligence" section, an online journal featuring original editorial content. Through interviews, lookbooks, and feature articles, they educated their customers on the history of the brands they carried and demonstrated how to style the products. This created a "greater understanding and appreciation of the product," transforming passive consumers into an engaged and knowledgeable community.

This decade-long focus on e-commerce technology, content and quality before the major launch of their in-house label represents a masterful, if perhaps unintentional, business strategy. Most brands begin with a product and then face the high-risk, capital-intensive challenge of finding a market and building distribution channels. HAVEN inverted this model. This "platform-first" approach de-risked their product launch and is a fundamental reason for their enduring success.

Strategic Collaborations

Collaborations are a core component of HAVEN's brand identity, serving as a method to reinforce their values and expand their expertise. These partnerships are not arbitrary marketing exercises; they are carefully chosen alliances with brands that are "pushing the envelope when it comes to innovation". Each collaboration acts as a form of third-party validation, reinforcing a specific pillar of the HAVEN ethos.

Partnering with Viberg, a legendary Canadian bootmaker, anchors their identity in high-quality domestic manufacturing and heritage craftsmanship. Working with Norda, a niche Canadian trail-running shoe brand, signals their commitment to cutting-edge, authentic performance. Collaborations with historic English shoemakers like Clarks Originals and Tricker’s demonstrate a deep respect for timeless design, providing a balance to their modern, technical focus. These partnerships allow HAVEN to tell a multi-faceted story, cementing their authority across the domains of Canadian heritage, technical innovation, and enduring quality.

Conclusion.

The story of HAVEN is a modern blueprint for building an authentic and enduring brand in a world obsessed with fleeting trends. Its success is the result of cumulative effects of countless deliberate decisions.

"There's no silver bullet, but there are a hundred golden bb's".

This philosophy—a relentless focus on high-quality products, a steadfast adherence to core values, and a culture of continuous learning and adaptation—is the true secret to their longevity.

The Chmielewski brothers have built something with a deeper resonance. Daniel expresses immense pride in seeing their journey inspire others, particularly young entrepreneurs. Their path from a small-town upbringing to the global stage serves as powerful proof that passion, when fused with discipline and a clear vision, can overcome any perceived barrier, be it geographical or industrial.

Ultimately, HAVEN stands as more than just a clothing brand; it is a quiet champion for a more conscious and purposeful form of consumption. In an era of disposability, their focus on timeless design, exceptional craftsmanship, and functional utility advocates for a "buy fewer, better things" mentality. They have built a sanctuary for those who believe that clothing should not be a fleeting costume, but a reliable and enriching tool for everyday life.

Sources used:

* Built to last - Sharp Magazine

* EyeCMag - Haven Shop opens in Toronto

* Hypebeast - Haven Opens Flagship in Vancouver

* NuvoMagazine - How Haven Became A Streetwear Brand

Listen in the substack podcast app

Or on Apple, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.

Welcome back.

Im excited to be back making more consistent content for the subs. Todays podcast was a lot of fun to do.

We had a familiar face back on the pod - Melissa Caouette from MC Consulting and Pocket Lobbyist - subscribe here

We talked deeply about the state of play in Canadian Politics and how the tariff war is impacting our economy, Canadians sentiment towards the Prime Minister and what we should expect over the coming 12-18 months.

Market Update📈📉

· Macro: Huge changes to interest rate policy, Jobs data and foreign policy strategy is afoot

· Market: GPT 5 drops… The impacts that should trickle down as a result.

· Media: A Huge Deal between the NFL and Disney changes the landscape of sports media

GPT5 release:

OpenAI’s GPT-5 & Open Source OSS: OpenAI had a very big product week, with both its long anticipated GPT-5 and GPT-OSS, ‘Open-Weight’ AI models. The key takeaways on GPT-5 are that it is simplified and unified such that their 700+ million weekly users don’t have to pre-pick which AI model to click on, from a drop down menu. Now GPT-5 is designed to ‘route’ the queries to the right underlying OpenAI models. Also GPT-5 is broadly available even in free tiers. Although higher usage means higher priced tiers. Also businesses and developers can of course pick specific OpenAI models still via the APIs. On the OpenAI open weight ‘OSS’ models, the offerings should sate businesses and developers who want to use open source to craft their own AIs, but stay within the broader OpenAI ecosystem. Also this helps OpenAI publicly respond to the global popularity of Chinese open source models. And of course address Meta’s Llama LLMs. Both sets of products now will of course be rigorously reviewed. discussed, and assessed by the global market. So stay tuned for that. More here.

Big Tech Navigates AI:

Apple & Nvidia Manage Tariffs: Both Apple for now, and Nvidia a few weeks ago, seem to have mollified and placated the administration in Washington. Most importantly on their ongoing tech tariffs, especially on chips and devices. Both CEOs Tim Cook and Jensen Huang have done what they had to do to personally manage their companies through these geopolitical and ‘just political’ waters. These depths in tech are now more politically treacherous than in any prior tech waves. And it’s not clear that getting exemptions for their particular companies is going to really help long-term. Especially given the enormous, and complex ecosystems their businesses have built and rely on. To do the tech magic at global scale that they’ve achieved for investors to date. More here and here

Mind Candy:

A Great Newsletter Post from Mel at Pocket Lobbyist:

“I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about small-c conservatism and how it applies in modern contexts. A recurring theme that surfaces when I juxtapose philosophical conservatism and philosophical liberalism is the concept of common sense and how it is developed. (Note: these are different than political interpretations).

In the conservative philosophical tradition, 'common sense' is a kind of accumulated wisdom of tradition, which is inherited rather than invented; a kind of practical knowledge grounded in habit and custom. Unlike liberals, who may believe common sense has been historically constructed as a result of bias, privilege, or outdated norms (rather than as a result of experience), conservatives may adopt a practical approach and may rely less on "procedures" or "rules" and focus more on intentionality and practicality.

The rick bell story below about my friend Nuvyn Peters and her family swing encapsulates the damaging impact of governments over-regulating, over-prescribing, and over-involving themselves in areas where application of a rule appears to have lost touch with the spirit of why it was created in the first place. To be grounded in the tradition of philosophical conservatism is to observe how these overreaches can, over time, damage the social fabric of our communities and societies with negative consequences (i.e., bylaw officers are unreasonable; therefore, all bylaws are unreasonable, which is surely not the case).

I have no doubt that many people at the City of Calgary agree that this is an absurd situation and likely agree that the swing should have been left alone.

However, the issue is that we no longer empower people, whether within governments (or airlines and banks as other examples), to develop and apply common sense in executing their duties because we rely so heavily on rules and so-called "expertise," however this may be designated in a particular context.

We are discouraging enforcement officers (be it bylaw, customer service, or otherwise) from thinking critically about their engagement with other human beings by being excessively prescriptive in the name of efficiency or consistency, but to what end?

Even Thomas Paine (a liberal) understood this: "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil...in its worst state, an intolerable one."

Albertans will vote in municipal elections on October 20, 2025. If you find yourself chatting with candidates, ask them what they think of common sense and how they would seek to ensure bylaws build–rather than deteriorate–social cohesion and community. Local government is the closest to us, and it matters a whole lot.”

Podcast & YouTube Recommendations🎙

* What can GPT5 do?

* Stephen Kotkin — How Stalin Became the Most Powerful Dictator in History

* Zeihan on Trumps Ukraine Policy Change

Best Links of The Week🔮

* The story behind Ozempic’s parent company, Novo Nordisk. Born from a desperate quest to save a single life, this Danish pharmaceutical titan would go on to transform diabetes treatment, revolutionize drug delivery, and most recently, ignite a global obsession with weight-loss medications. This is the remarkable story of how a small nation of just six million produced one of the world's most influential biotech empires. Source: Quartr

* "The U.S. government slapped a 39% tariff on imports from Switzerland, including watches, after a diplomatic trip to Washington D.C. by the Swiss president and top government officials failed to win a last minute reprieve from the Trump administration. The new tariff rate of 39% came into effect at midnight on Thursday in the U.S. and at 6 am in Switzerland. The surge in costs for importers in the biggest single market for Swiss watches will challenge an industry that is already struggling with a post-pandemic-era downturn in global demand and a rising Swiss franc that has gained 12% against a weaker U.S. dollar this year. Meanwhile, input costs to produce luxury watches have continued to rise, with the price of gold hitting record highs." Source: Hodinkee

* "Nvidia and AMD have agreed to give the US government 15 per cent of the revenues from chip sales in China, as part of an unusual arrangement with the Trump administration to obtain export licences for the semiconductors. The two chipmakers agreed to the financial arrangement as a condition for obtaining export licences for the Chinese market that were granted last week." Source: FT

"Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan will visit the White House after President Trump called for his removal due to ties with Chinese businesses. Tan aims to reassure Trump of his commitment to the U.S. and highlight Intel’s manufacturing as a national security priority. Trump’s call followed scrutiny of Tan’s business dealings, including sales to a Chinese military university by a software company he formerly led and his venture-capital firm’s investments." Source: WSJ

"The US expects to largely complete negotiations with countries that have yet to secure a trade deal by the end of October, Nikkei Asia reported, citing an interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The comments, made to Nikkei on Thursday, come after President Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariffs took effect. Some key trading partners, including Canada, Mexico and Switzerland, are still seeking to secure more favorable terms with the US." Source: Bloomberg

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