Bad advice

Good afternoon, everyone. 

In today’s letter:

— Taylor Scollon

Major AI chatbots often give poor financial advice, according to a new report. The benchmarking study done by Saturn, a tech firm serving financial advisors, tested 18 AI models (including paid versions) across 121 money-related questions, generating more than 10,000 responses. The AI tools made mistakes 57% of the time, and erred 88% of the time when questions involved multiple calculations. Of the models tested, Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5 on reasoning mode performed best, providing the correct answer around 60% of the time.

Investors are hopeful the U.S. and Iran can make a deal at this week’s UN General Assembly. Or at least avoid escalating hostilities any further. While both sides appeared to be preparing for more intense fighting over the weekend, oil traders seem to think a deal of some sort is more likely, with Brent crude falling back to around the $100 mark. Donald Trump has said he’s open to meeting with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in New York during the General Assembly, and it’s possible that meetings between Trump and Xi could end with an agreement that sees China apply pressure on Tehran to end the fighting. All of this comes, of course, amid a worsening energy picture as supply buffers run down — that is also adding pressure on the White House to get a deal.

One of Canada’s most talked-about tech startups is facing a key test of its share price. The lockup period for stock in Xanadu Quantum Technologies, which is trying to build a commercially viable quantum computer, ends tomorrow, which means its early investors will be free to sell their stock on public stock exchanges. Xanadu has been on a rocky ride since going public earlier this year, with the stock quadrupling shortly after listing before crashing below its IPO price. Any quantum computing company is going to be ultimately judged on whether it can actually build a quantum computer that has real-world applications, so significant volatility in the share price is to be expected. 

Michael Saylor’s Strategy Inc. is buying Bitcoin again. The Bitcoin treasury company bought more of the cryptocurrency for the first time in almost a month, sparking a surge in its price. With more than US$70 billion in Bitcoin on its books, Strategy is reportedly the world’s largest corporate holder of the asset. Bitcoin’s price had fallen nearly 50% since its high last year, putting stress on Strategy’s finances, but a recent recovery — it’s risen around 36% since June — has buoyed the company.

Copper production fell in the first half of the year, adding pressure to an already supply-crunched market. Copper prices are hovering around record highs, up around 45% over the past year, and demand is forecast to rise by 50% by 2040. The metal is an essential component in electronics of all sorts, including phones, EVs, computers, and more — its scarcity is likely to contribute to price hikes for those products, something that is already happening due to demand from the AI sector.