Bonds vs. dividends

Good afternoon, everyone. Hesitant to share your home address with anyone from Facebook Marketplace who pings to ask, “Is this still available?” Canada Post is trialling a solution called Swap Spot. Buyers and sellers on resale platforms like Facebook Marketplace, Kijiji, LesPAC and Craigslist in eligible cities can use a post office as a more secure drop-off and pickup location. You don’t even have to meet. The buyer gets to pick up that old IKEA rug, dusty lamp or gently used breadmaker on their own time.

In today’s newsletter:

— Leah Golob

Looks like we’re just getting started with prediction markets in Canada. A group of veteran financial executives led by former Vanguard Investments Canada CEO Atul Tiwari is seeking regulatory approval for a new platform called Verdx focused solely on prediction market trading. Canadian regulators have thus far only approved contracts tied to economic indicators, financial markets and climate trends — unlike in the U.S., where sports and entertainment bets are popular. Verdx plans to operate within those limits. Critics say prediction markets are more akin to gambling than investing, but Tiwari’s goal is to show their practical uses, too. For example, contracts tied to extreme weather could be used to hedge against costs from floods or insurance deductibles. Here’s one safe bet: prediction markets in Canada aren’t going away anytime soon.

The G7 taps its emergency oil stash. Over the next four months, the Group of Seven — nations, not the landscape painters — says they will release 100 million barrels of oil into the global market, starting with a substantial amount of diesel within the first 20 days, as costs continue to skyrocket. For context: the average price in Canada reached $2.63 per litre on Thursday, while Vancouver was hit even harder at $2.71 a litre. According to French President and G7 chair Emmanuel Macron, the decision “should bring down prices.” G7 countries have also agreed not to withhold energy exports from one another, which means Trump’s threatened U.S. diesel export ban is now off the table. 

Pick a headline about AI this month and it probably contains the word "bubble." Canadian businesses aren't acting like it.

Float analyzed real card spend from 10,000+ Canadian companies. Over two years, AI spending grew 12x, and adoption spread well past tech into energy, retail and finance.

The harder problem is what that spend does to a budget:

Software used to be a fixed line you could forecast a year out. AI is a variable one, and most finance teams are still budgeting for it the old way.

So how are you managing your AI spending?

See the full report

Employees at top AI companies are ditching impressive tech titles like “chief technical officer” and “senior software engineer” to call themselves “members of the technical staff.” Roles like “AI researcher” and “senior product management leader” now seem to fit into this uniform mold, too. As of December, 39 per cent of employees at Anthropic, 31 per cent at OpenAI and 26 per cent at xAI listed “member of technical staff” as their current job title on LinkedIn, according to analysis by Stanford University researchers. Possible benefits of the name change include keeping competitors in the dark, flattening hierarchies, offering prestige without climbing the management ladder and giving employees more flexibility in their roles. Still, the title sounds like it would fit naturally within a dystopian movie. As one historian notes, it “emphasizes collaboration, but it also de-emphasizes accountability.”

Surging bond yields give Canadian dividend stocks a run for their money. Rising bond yields can rub some of the sheen off dividend stocks by giving investors another place to put their money. According to The Globe and Mail, a number of Canadian stocks “stand out for showing early vulnerabilities” just as the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond climbed to a 24-year high above 5.3 per cent last week. Since July, TC Energy has fallen more than 17 per cent, Fortis is down 10 per cent and Telus has tumbled 26 per cent. The sell-off may look like a buying opportunity for investors wanting to add dividend stocks to their portfolio, but patience may pay off here. The last time bond yields were around these levels, dividend yields on Fortis, TC Energy and the Big Six banks were considerably higher.

Friday’s jobs report will put Trump’s latest tariffs to the test. On the watch list this week is Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey — the first since Trump introduced his latest round of tariffs on Aug. 22. As a refresher, Canada lost 42,000 jobs in August, while the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 6.4 per cent. The report follows surprisingly resilient economic data from last week. GDP was flat in July, but economists estimate the economy grew at an annualized rate of around two per cent in the third quarter. “Canada’s economy is proving to be much more resilient in the third quarter than negative nellies feared,” one economist noted, while another says the latest GDP results could just be “the calm before the storm.”

Rory Mitz, Executive Vice-President, Banking Center Distribution & Mass Affluent, has more than 25 years of experience advising Canadians on their personal finances. We asked him about the biggest money mistakes he sees, what AI can and can't do when it comes to personal finances, and when it makes sense to get a financial advisor.

The Peak: From a purely financial view, when is it worth giving up some return or paying a fee to get better tax treatment or an optimized portfolio?

Rory: The best way to think about it is that financial complexity often arrives before the wealth does. So it's not about a wealth threshold. We look at a client's trajectory, their needs, and the likelihood that advice can create value for them over time. The research shows that the value of professional advice rises with household income, as does the opportunity to coordinate a client's full financial picture. The key thing is that the best time to get advice is before your financial life becomes too complex to navigate alone.

What are the biggest financial mistakes you see people make?

Rory: Having done this a long time, I'd say the biggest mistake is letting spending rise as quickly as income. A raise can create breathing room, but lifestyle inflation can absorb it before anything goes toward savings, paying down debt, or other long-term goals.

Another is making financial decisions in isolation. For example, deciding whether to contribute to an RRSP, make extra mortgage payments, or put everything into a TFSA, each on its own. It's about having a full, connected plan so you can see how the choices work together. The right mix depends on the client's full picture: income, expected income growth, debt, tax situation, housing plans, family priorities, and time horizon.

People also underestimate how quickly complexity builds, as compensation changes, registered accounts multiply, or milestones like buying a home and then a cottage come along. The biggest risk is letting these costs and complexities creep up without a plan.

People are using AI tools for financial advice. What do you think about that? What do you get from a human that AI can’t provide?

Rory: I've spent a lot of time thinking about it and experimenting with the technology. It's a huge enabler and very useful for getting started, learning basic concepts, and framing questions. But clients want context. AI is fine for one-off answers, but the value comes from a human relationship that can pull together an understanding of someone's entire financial situation, which we call connected advice.

I can give you an example. I recently met a client who received an inheritance and wanted to put it all on the mortgage. They asked AI whether to pay down the mortgage or put it all in the market. They got isolated, binary answers, and the answer kept changing depending on how they phrased the prompt.

We took them through a planning process and found their real goal was to have the mortgage paid off by retirement, while also building wealth for retirement. So they put part of the inheritance toward a lump-sum mortgage payment that still had the mortgage paid off one year before their target retirement date, and invested the rest. They hit their mortgage goal and also had the chance to build significant wealth as the portfolio grows toward retirement.

That's a basic example. There was value in the information from AI, but the best solution came from the human relationship. We see that all the time.

Read the full Q&A on our website.