The Canadian Investor - Braden Is Back to Talk AI, Jobs, Power Bottlenecks & Canada’s Future

Episode Date: May 30, 2026

In this episode, Simon, Braden, and Daniel break down the AI boom from multiple angles: whether today’s market resembles the dot-com bubble, why demand for compute, electricity, and data keeps accelerating, and where the biggest bottlenecks are starting to appear. They also discuss how AI could reshape the job market, why companies may eventually need to “right-size” their AI usage, and whether cheaper models could become a major theme in the years ahead. The conversation then shifts to Canada’s economic challenges, including weak GDP growth, poor consumer sentiment, declining incentives for entrepreneurs, and why Canada risks losing more talent and high-growth companies to the U.S. Tickers of stocks discussed: NVDA, TSM, MU, MSFT, META, GOOGL, AMZN, ORCL, PWR, RBNK, SHOP   Watch the full video on Our New Youtube Channel! Check out our portfolio by going to Jointci.com Our Website Canadian Investor Podcast Network Twitter: @cdn_investing Simon’s twitter: @Fiat_Iceberg Braden’s twitter: @BradoCapital Dan’s Twitter: @stocktrades_ca Want to learn more about Real Estate Investing? Check out the Canadian Real Estate Investor Podcast! Apple Podcast - The Canadian Real Estate Investor  Spotify - The Canadian Real Estate Investor  Web player - The Canadian Real Estate Investor Asset Allocation ETFs | BMO Global Asset Management Sign up for Fiscal.ai for free to get easy access to global stock coverage and powerful AI investing tools. Register for EQ Bank, the seamless digital banking experience with better rates and no nonsense.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Me and Simone have been doing these regular macro chats. And one of the big things that people ask us about is AI, AI impact on the job market, on the stock market. And we wanted to get the AI God himself on here to talk to us about what's happening in the space. So we're very fortunate to have Braden back on the show and talking to us a little bit about the AI space. So what are we going to go through today, Simone?

And then what are we hoping to do? Dan, what are we looking like live in the room right now? Is this a real estate audience? Is it the podcast audience? Yeah, it's real estate and tech. Yeah, it's real estate and tech. So it's like, it's Toronto Tech Week event for real estate. So the event's called AI meets real estate. It's just a bunch of people going through a bunch of different tech. We've had like vendors, construction tech, AI for real estate, AI for finance, AI lawyers. I don't know if you know like own right. Yep. Yeah, groups like that. Yeah. Brilliant. Okay. Yeah. Topics. I mean, I don't know. if we'll get to all of them, but what we were thinking about talking, so how AI is changing industries, whether it's creating jobs or job losses, what industries are changing the most, what the stock market has been doing, what we've been seeing for earning season on the AI front, bottlenecks, compute power grid, so what could be limiting the expansions right now. And then comparison

to the dot-com bubble, is it a fair comparison or not? So I have some interesting thoughts. And on that and then the China versus U.S. model and computer supply chain as well if we can get to that. So it's a pretty jam pack in terms of topics. So we'll see. I don't think we'll get to all of them, but let's give it a try. Let's do it. Sounds good. So I mean like AI is obviously all the hype right now in the in the stock market space. You're seeing like we got three, I think three new IPOs on deck. What is it? Three new trillion dollar IPOs on deck. Obviously going to pull a lot of capital away. what do we think like um i mean let maybe we start we'll start with the hardest question first is this the bubble that everybody's describing it to be is it a worthy comparison to the you know

to the market that we saw during the dot com bubble as an example like the one thing that stands out to me is revenue like these companies actually have revenue by comparison to to dot com but i don't know what do you guys think in there there are there is air pockets of a lot of hot air don't get me wrong but i i think you know, comparing it to dot-com bubble is, you know, a disservice to the dot-com bubble. We had people buying domain names and then immediately calling Goldman Sachs to go public. Like there was five, six IPOs a day of size of people actually looking for exposure to the dot-com bubble. And so are there pockets of hot air? But, I mean, the infrastructure player of all infrastructure players right now in Nvidia,

I mean, it's not like it's trading at a bazillion time sales. Like, I think, you know, it's trading at next year's 20 times profits, you know, and 22 times next year's free cash flow. So I think calling it a bubble is a disservice or comparisons to the dot-com bubble is not remembering history very well because dot com was truly insane. So I will say there are pockets of hot air, but at the same time, there's actually a lot of rationality. There's a lot of use for what's happening right now. Humans demand for three things is insatiable right now. Electricity, compute and data. Those are like, that's the salt and pepper of tomorrow's economy right now.

And we're going to want more salt and pepper in the future, not less. Yeah, and I mean, for me, I would agree that there's definitely some big differences with what we saw in the dot-com bubble. The first thing I would say is I would bet a decent amount of money right now that the top 10 AI names, like the big names, the ones that are firing on all cylinder, there's going to be one or two that will experience some significant trouble over the next decade. I mean, this is a similarity from the dot-com bubble is some of the big players, the profitable ones. like there are some small companies maybe it'll be fiscal.a aai that may be private right now they may not even be founded right now that will maybe that will probably end up in that top 10 in a decade from now so i think we just have to just to put some context there but i think also because we do this dan and i on the macro side of things i think also the way the fed could be acting could have a much different impact because q e wasn't really a thing back in the doctor come bubble. And right now, I think QE is just part of the playbook. And especially when you start looking at inflation and in this case to be made, that AI will be disinflationary. And depending on what the Fed does with Kevin Warsh, maybe they start taking an approach to say, you know what, yeah,

we're seeing the inflation go up the straight. You know, things will resolve itself in the next year or two. We don't think we should be hiking rates. We think they actually should be going down or monetary policy should be looser. I mean, the market could start ripping even higher if that kind of stuff happens because what's being priced in right now is tighter policy this year and next year. So you have to factor that in where maybe we are in the bubble. Maybe we are just halfway through that bubble too. And like Braden said, I mean, I looked at Nvidia's quarter Taiwan Semiconductor, which is a great proxy because they actually manufacture the chips for all the big chip designers. And demand is off the charts. It is off the charts. You take Micron. If any of the audience has tried buying a new PC

recently, you probably realize that RAM, the RAM is extremely expensive. There is no memory to be found. Well, if you're willing to pay a lot. Yeah, yeah, but like, you know, like, but hypothetically. How much of the, like, do we think that the interest rate, like the bond market pricing in higher rates is actually a function of like this huge cap-ex spend that they can see on the horizon, how much money the government is going to have to pump in. If I'm a, if I'm a trader and investor, like this looks like it reads like an inflationary environment setting aside, obviously all of the stuff that we've been talking about over the last little bit, some oil price shock, et cetera, like if you just isolate the AI and this huge

capex and infrastructure spend, like is that in your opinion like part of the thesis of why the market is capable of charging so much or pricing in rates going up? Yeah, I mean, I think it's just a unique environment, right? Because I think you can make the case that yes, there's a lot of spend. I mean, one of the things that Microsoft said that was really interesting in their latest earning calls is they're planning to spend $190 billion in CAPEX this year. I'm sure I'm not breaking into anyone listening that most of it will be going to short-term assets like CPUs and GPUs.

They said, I think, two-thirds of it. But of that $1190 billion, they actually had to increase that to that number by $25 billion because of component pricing that has gone up. And if you listen to the calls, and I know Braden's nodding, from all these hyperscalers, you can think of meta, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, even. You can include Oracle. They're a bit different, but they're still spending a whole lot on this. Every single call, every quarter, they're saying that the next quarter is going to be

significantly higher. And that's been happening for like over a year. And I did some rough mat and I think it's pretty safe bet to look at $750 billion in KAPX spending this year by those five names alone. That doesn't include what Open AI in spending. That does include when Entropic is spending. That doesn't include what a bunch of other ones are spending. So it's just, it's just absolutely massive and it's increased 235% for those five names since 2024 and 400%. since 2023. Yeah, I'll just reiterate that. Do not underestimate our insatiable demand for intelligence in the sky right now.

It is, so there's been seven distinct technology windows since modern civilization, which I'll mark it kind of 1830. What those are beginning is railroads change the world. And then it was automobiles in 1903, changed the world. radio and television brought mass media to people in 26. You had plastics come out in 56. Plastics completely changed human civilization when that was being manufactured at scale. Cable networks and then into cell networks.

Completely changed humanity again. And then in the kind of 95 era onwards to now, you had the age of software. And so now we're entering, and think of all the value creation in just that software category alone. Like that window opened for all these companies to be made. And now it kind of slammed the door behind it. Like there's no Airbnb 2.0 coming out. And that technology opened up in kind of the consumer software in like 2012 with the iPhone. And all of a sudden people have advanced computers in their pocket.

And so that opened up a new window. So this window of technology or sorry, intelligence in the sky is extremely, extremely underrated. I will say that there's going to be massive amounts of job creation as well in this era, as well as changes of jobs. Okay. So in all of these windows, there's been mass disruption, but not destruction. So this is not a zero-sum game. There's disruption, not destruction of the economy.

And so I'll try to, I think I'm the optimist here where there's all these new types of jobs and new amounts of value that's being created. However, in that disruption side, paperwork is not work. Paperwork is right in the crosshairs of intelligence in the sky. All of that type of work is going to be automated with intelligence in the sky. And that's exactly what we're doing with fiscal AI, with all this data for financial markets that used to be pen and paper down. And so there is disruption but not destruction of the economy. And I think it's important for people to remember that there's been seven very distinct technology windows that have changed how people live, changed how people work, but it did not

necessarily flip the economy upside down. In fact, we had more productivity gains over time. I think I like I used the example. Somebody presented it to me of like if you go back 200 years, 25% of US GDP was firewood, I think. You know, and then if you go back 100 years, like 80% of people of jobs were in agriculture. And now like,

I don't know, I know one or two people who work in in those industries, right? So as those things were automated away, did that net become negative on the economy because we were losing jobs? Well, no. we just found other things to do because it's a meaningful part of human existence to work. And if anything, like most of the jobs that we have right now are garbage. Like you said,

like I'm in a room full of real estate professionals. Like we collect paper and move it to one, you know, get a signature and move it from one professional to another. All of those workflows start getting automated. It frees us up for the actual meaningful part of what our job is, which is connecting with customers and, you know, properly advising people, doing sales, relationships, or whatever. Like, I think, like, the bold case or the optimistic case is that, you know, in 10 or 20 or, you know, 50 years, we just actually have way more meaningful existence as a result of these changes getting rid of all the crap work. Right. Nobody, I don't really. There's like, there's the odd people, but I feel like they even they have, like, just convinced themselves that they've

that they like it, right? Dan, imagine you're just talking about when, you know, far, how much of the economy or how many people you worked in agriculture. And now, you know, like John Deere is just like automated that. Imagine you were to show a farmer like a hundred years ago, a piece of modern John Deere equipment that like literally plows the field by itself when you press a button. They, they would actually think that you are from a completely different universe. So, so then are we all in agreement that like AI is actually a net net positive for like economic growth, like, and the fear of, because you hear about like what, like the rounds of layoffs, right? Block. I don't know, like, there's a couple of other ones. They're just like laying off

people as a result of AI. But it's arguable that it's creating more jobs. I actually have a spicy take there. They overhired and the, the smash up of Block, which was, you know, the, was it after pay that they bought? And then in was square. They were due for, they were due for post-MNA restructuring, which has been happening for a long, long time, hidden in the blanket of AI opportunity with efficiency. That's what I think. I think it's like it's a lot of these companies, like, right sizing, a lot of the hiring decisions that they did over the pandemic when everybody just jacked up on cheap credit and stimmy checks, right? Exactly. And so it was going to happen. You can just do it under the guise of AI. But like the idea that all of these layoffs are like

a signal that it's just going to keep perpetuating to the point where we have zero jobs and everybody's on UBI and like robots are doing everything. I don't know if it's necessarily. So like we're all in agreement on that kind of part of the AI thesis. Yeah. Yeah, I would say it's the most likely outcome. I don't. I think you both know me that I tend to think more improbabilistic outcome.

I don't. I think it could also be more disrupted, but I think it's more likely that yes, it's just it is maybe a short term disruption for some people, but they get retrain in something else and then they find other jobs. And I think there's going to be a lot of that. to people who actually take the time and learn how to use AI and make themselves more productive. Like I think, and Brayden, you tell me if that's what you look for.

I imagine, yes, you want people that are able to use those tools so that they can be productive and when you hire them. They may not be experts, but they still have that base and they can really use that. And those who are just not learning it out of fear or whatever reason, because they're said in their ways, they're the people that will be left behind. Yeah, look, I mean, I hire, there's a, there's a, there's a like McKinsey report. Oh, sorry, go ahead, Braden. I was going to say, I, I employed 65 people now with, with the startup and, you know, we're an AI native company. What I say to people and what are the, what are the important questions that I ask people on interviews now is the cat is out of the bag. We're not going back to the way of engineering before. How has your process or how is your software engineering capabilities changed since December of 2020? because that is the time when models wrote code better than most of us. And so that's the line in the sand when Opus 4.5 or whatever it was came out where

we're not going back to the old way. So tell me about how you now have adapted to the new way. Haven't we actually seen a net increase in software jobs, like people hiring software engineers since AI came out? I guess because companies are trying to figure out to integrate it. The job that already has infinite leverage in it, which is software engineering,

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What about like, so when we talk about like infrastructure, electricity, like a lot of people are investing in like bottlenecks on the, on the AI trade, right? Everybody's just like trying to like pull what's the next bottleneck, right? And I always like try and go very far down to think about this stuff. And I think about it actually being pretty optimistic for Canada if we can probably diversify our economy. But like, so right now the bottom. bottlenecks that are exploding or like, I guess like Toto has like their ceramic pucks, you know, that's like the next one. Or I think like InVideo was buying like a lot of sand disk

storage. The storage became a bottleneck. Eventually you get to electricity, right? In like Alberta, they're flaring natural gas. Like they literally are just wasting electricity and you're seeing data centers planned in places like that. Then you get to like, how do we build electricity? Well, we need copper to transmit or aluminum or all of these things. Does Canada actually stand a benefit, like if we're talking from a Canadian real estate investor perspective, and like, what are the good, stable, long-term trades that maybe aren't exposed to the volatility of the AI space right now? It's a good question.

I'm not sure. I mean, there's tons of bottlenecks. Don't get me wrong. One of them, too, could be like TSMC, right? One of the things they mention is just the pad the advanced packaging. So just combining all of these, the GPU, CPUs accelerators together. That's one of their bottleneets. I mean, you're seeing energy.

You're seeing like all these hyperscapital. are trying to sign contracts, long-term contracts. To secure this energy, like five, ten years down the line. So that's another bottleneck. I mean, we did a recent recording about some hidden AI winners, and a lot of them are power grid infrastructure because it needs a build-out. And like, Quanta services is one that comes to mind that I keep banging my head on the desk that I wish I invested in it when I first talked about it a year, year and a half ago.

But those are examples that I'm familiar with on the Canadian side. I'm not sure from a real estate perspective. Maybe you have some good ideas then and we can add to that. Well, when I like even less real estate, like when I think about grid build out, like this is, and this maybe is a good segue to like the conversation of like the US versus China, right? Like, you know, you have Chinese AI companies, you know, many of them like open weight models or just like, you know, the deep seeks of the world that, yeah, they're not like they're not. like they're not frontier model quality, right? They're not an opus, 4-8 or whatever, just drop today.

They're not a chat to BT-5-5. But like a lot of those models are like, I don't need, I don't need 5-5. Like I'm in real estate. We move paperwork. We get stuff signed. We need to review a home inspection or a condo certificate or whatever. That doesn't need to know how to do rocket science or brain surgery or whatever, right? So I can like, I can reliably use some of these worst models in this industry.

at a way lower cost. And China is probably likely able to deliver that because they have cheap. Like their electricity buildout, their infrastructure build out is just insane, right? It's like a, you know, it's a, it's a compelling case for authoritarianism. But then you think about like, how is the U.S. going to double or triple their electricity grid in the next two years to accommodate for this Cappex expansion? I don't know. I feel, it feels like that is where we run into, start running into the big problems.

is like either the consumer starts getting outbid by your, you know, your AI companies on electricity, which we've heard. And then like you run into rolling blackouts or something like, you know, you see in South Africa as an example. Or they have to actually just stop being ridiculous with bureaucracy and using AI to solve problems like that. And I don't know. Like I don't have optimism. That's the way I apply the real estate lens, though, is I just think about bureaucracy and how much red tape it takes to get a house built, much less an entire power grid.

How are they going to do that? Like, you know? Well, AI has a very deep perception problem. And I think that the people at the top of these models are honestly to blame. You have Dario of now the trillion dollar company saying, this model is so powerful. It's going to destroy all of humanity. It's like I don't understand the,

I don't understand the incentive structure of some of these absolute maniacs at the top of these companies. But back to your China question, they've been forced to do more with less when it comes to cutting edge compute. And that's forced them to build these kind of lightweight, lighter, cheaper models. And there is going to be, by prediction for 2027, is there's going to be this huge new market for cheaper models. Right now, we are throwing you the Ferrari when you just need the Honda with some of these tasks. But no one's knocking on the door for you to say, ROI on spend right now. There's there's just no real knock on the door right now from CFOs to demand ROI from from tokens. And so it's not that the work that's being done with this tokens is not worth it. It's just why are we using the top model for every every task. So that will stop. I think the answer is because it's subsidized, right? Like because it's being subsidized by like, isn't it like for every $500 you spend on like on chat, EBT, they're using two grand worth of

computer? No, no. Anthropics reporting. Very, very positive gross margin. Okay, that's good. So, but that's smooth then because, but that's because they throttle like crazy now, right? Like, because they've started basically putting usage limits on everybody. There's going to be a demand internally for the, for the dollars and cents to start adding up when it comes to our, and it's not to say that the investments aren't worth it. It's just why are we spending 10 tokens on a task that required one? Just, just easy, easy numbers.

And so I think in 2027, there's going to be a massive demand. for all of the models to really start positioning each model for certain types of tasks and workloads that don't require the top amount of compute spend. Yeah, because sooner or later, this is one thing we've seen time and time again, is you can have a lot of spend on something and revenue growth is nice, but sooner or later the market demands profitability. Maybe it'll be in five years from now, maybe it'll be a year from now. I don't know.

And Braden offered his thoughts in terms of, Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense, right, to kind of make sure it's task appropriate. But sooner or later, the market will demand profitability. That I can guarantee. Right now, the CFO is not asking you to right size the model for the task to the engineering team. They're just throwing 4.88 now today at everything. And this is happening in the spirit of token maxing. That will reverse eventually, but that knock on the door has not come yet.

Well, I think like wouldn't the logical. catalyst for that to take place, be when these companies IPO and now have to start being accountable to a bunch of public shareholders. Like, it seems like a pretty compelling moment in time for them to just magically start wanting to be profitable. But I think the better question is like, can the market actually absorb? Like, if you had to pay Forex the cost tomorrow for, for Claude, would you? Like, maybe you would, right? And maybe a lot of people would. But I don't think your average consumer, which is probably what's dry, like making these a consumer tool. I don't think you're average consumer is to be able to do that. And that's where I think you're right that the cheap,

like you're going to see a shift to the cheaper models. Or different options, I would think, right? I think that's more that more tailored option to what like people's needs are. I mean, if someone's just using a model to, you know, help them write their essays or whatnot, they don't need something extremely powerful where if someone is really using it to the max, multiple agents, kind of running their business in the background, like clearly they'll be willing to to pay more because they're probably saving on workforce anyways. So I think it's just right sizing them. I think Braden was just saying that.

That makes a whole lot of sense. It's logical. But maybe they just, right now is just getting the latest model and just being in front. And I mean, Entropic has done pretty well, just the fact that it's been kind of leaffrogged a little bit,

obviously could change. But there is some value to being the top model in the moment. Like people do take notice and try it out and switch, at least for the short term. Yeah, I feel like I, but like I feel like that switch. which just happens constantly.

Like we were just talking about it at the event here. Like you, you constantly are going back from chat GPT to Claude to chat CBT. I think they did a lot better of a job at Marketing at Gentic first. And like a lot of people don't even know that codex and all of these things can be done on chat GPT like that you can use. Because it's actually arguably a better model. I haven't tried 4-8 yet today.

But like 5-5 to me at least plugged into the open claw is like way better than Opus 4-5 or 4-6 was. And I just couldn't deal with the usage limits of Claude. So I just stopped using it all of. together. But like you, I don't like, do we ever get a point where they actually have loyalty? Like, if we're just talking about their business model, where they have customer loyalty or if there, are they constantly out innovating each other and people just like literally, the herd just shifts from back and forth from one to another to whoever the best model is.

Like, I want to hear what great is. That's a difficult business model to run, man. Yeah, well, well, there's different incentives, right? The model company wants you to token max. Right now the CFO's asking you to token max. That's going to reverse. That, that won't forever. So, no, I think we're just at an interesting point in time. That's it. That's all, right? Maybe that's where the bubble is. I don't think the bubble so much in the valuations. I think we've actually been pretty grounded. Yeah, there's pockets of hot air, but I think we've actually been pretty grounded with valuations. The hysteria around token maxing, though, that's, that, maybe that's the most bubbly thing of all really is, is the idea of token maxing.

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and it's all built on the concept of transparency because brokerage accounts are linked. And then once you link your brokerage account, you can get in-depth portfolio insights, track your dividends, and there's other stuff like learning duolingo style education lessons that are completely free. You can search up Blossom Social in the app store and join the community today. I'm on there. I encourage you go on there and follow me, search me up, some of the YouTubers and influencers and podcasters that you might know.

I bet you they're already on there. People are just on there talking, sharing their investment ideas, and using the analytics tools. So go ahead, blossom social in the app store, and I'll see you there. There is an old saying in investing. It's not about timing the market, but time in the market. The most successful investors aren't usually the ones trying to catch every top and bottom. They're the ones who spend the most time in the market. I've been a quest trade user for over five years, and the reason I stick with them is that

they remove the friction of regular investing. With no commissions on stock and ETF trades, you don't have to wait until you have thousands of dollars saved up to make a move. You can contribute small amounts regularly and keep your portfolio growing consistently, removing the stress of trying to time the market. And they keep making it easier to build a well-rounded portfolio. Soon, you'll be able to trade precious metals through Questrade, giving you even more ways to diversify. Questrade makes the whole process seamless, allow you to focus on what really matters your investment strategy, not trying to avoid fees. Ready to invest, head over to questrade.com, open and fund your account with code TCI and receive $50. Conditions apply.

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Yeah, yeah, finally. Fairly, barely. But yeah, yeah. I know. Just, yeah. Yeah, I mean, do you think that's going to weigh on consumer sentiment then? Like, now that we are officially in a recession by the GDP terms? Consumers don't give a shit.

They don't even know this happened. Yeah, consumer is also, it's how they feel, right? It's not what that number says, right? So a number might be, like we saw it. Like, why did Trump get in the second term? It's pretty simple. The Biden administration was telling them that the economy was great. And the headline numbers were doing pretty well.

But the vast majority of people were feeling like they were in recession. And so I think- Don't tell me how to feel. Exactly. No, that's true. And now Trump's doing the same mistake the other way around. So it's kind of funny for a lot of the population there. So just to show that I feel.

like the headline numbers, we get excited by it because we like to look at this stuff. But for a lot of people, it just matters is, are they really feeling it? Are they having to postpone a vacation because they just can't afford it this year? Are they not renting that cottage that was a five-hour drive because gas prices are too high? Like, that's how people feel it. And the average Canadian has been like feeling like they're in a recession then for like the last, I don't know, like two, three years then based on GDP per capita basis, like we've been in contraction, right? I mean, GDP per capita could be rising now. And even with, because population growth is so low, even with us being in a recession,

but I don't know if people like, your average Canadian feels far worse off than they did three, four years ago, which is what they benchmark to. People don't think about inflation on a year over year basis, right? They think about like, what did I pay for toilet paper during the COVID apocalypse? And then they, you know, they do the markup. And that's why they have a hard time believing the numbers. So, so, so is that to say that like sentiment is probably just like sufficiently, I think consumer sentiment in the U.S. is like the lowest has been in a while. And in Canada is the same thing.

Like, is there just a huge disconnect between, you know, Wall Street and Main Street then? Well, the problem is when you look at averages, it skews everything, right? I think it's just as simple as that. It's just you're looking at averages. And maybe when we didn't have as much as a case-shaped economy, maybe like 20, 25, 30 years ago, maybe that, you know, those metrics made a whole lot more sense. But I think right now it's just the top of the case. doing so well that it's pulling everything up. The numbers might look good, but it doesn't mean, the majority of people. I mean, you can look, you don't have to look far. Stats can has some numbers. You can go on the Fed data. I mean, the minority of people own the majority of assets,

and that has been like that for a while. It feels like this never-ending K. Exactly. Yeah. Recovery. I think the big challenge with that, too, is like, at a certain point that hits the consumption economy, right? So like you have, I think right now it's like 50% of consumption is done by like the top 10% of wealth, like consumers, I think. But that doesn't scale. Like if people get, if the rich get richer, they're not going to go by 60 or 70 or 70 or 80 or or 100% of the consumer goods, right? Like you're probably pretty close to the top of how much rich people can prop up the consumption economy. And so does it like, when does this, when is it like, when does actually materializing it being a like breakage in the in the consumer economy. I think that happens

at the macro level first with with actual currency issues until then I think the train runs honestly. I mean, I think you might see the next election cycle. I think that's going to be very telling. If the pendulum switches from Trump to Democrats, but like not the Democrats were used to, much further left kind of socialist Democrats, I think that'll be an indication. of where things might be going, whether it's the same in Canada, we'll have to see. But I think that's, yeah, that's probably a better indication. Even in Canada, right, the news of Duncan Dona coming in, did that have some pressure on Tim Orton's saying they'll reduce their use of the temporary for temporary foreign worker program?

Was that kind of, you know, a lot of college students that were trying to get those kind of jobs, not being able to? Was that pressure coming from there? and then you start thinking about recent graduate that studied and stuff that, you know, you just don't need for the job market right now. So those are all pressures that I think will see play out over the next four or five years. But I thought the Tim Horton's angle is definitely, I think, an indicator of sentiment, how it's shifting and some early moves that's affecting corporation. I'll add one thing. There's this obvious disconnect between how people feel the numbers that the Fed prints,

especially in the U.S., but especially here in Canada. Guys, if I was to just ask you what the big five banks in aggregate market cap weighted have produced their publicly traded stocks on a trailing 12 months, Simone, you might know this, like, off by hand, but like, just don't look it up. Just tell me what you think. Royal Bank, BMO, Nova Scotia, C-IBC, TD, and National have produced in a basket of equity returns in the last 12 months, just trailing one year. I haven't looked at it recently.

Last I look was at the start of the year, and they had crushed it in 2025. So I'm going to say, it's probably in the round like of 20, 25%, something. Triple that. Oh, wow. Okay. There you go. RBC Canadian Banking Index ETF, RBNKs up 60.3% past year. Crazy. Yeah. Like, this is what's happening, guys. This is how people feel, right?

Like, and this is, you know, and, and no one feels good. They're just like on their phone watching bad news all the time constantly. And then they feel inflation. And then they look at, they look at the. bank index and it's up 60% and they're like, what's happening with why wealth? And so the big question that I think people need to be asking. And I think the administration in the U.S. actually give them some props, mostly led by Michael Dell, what he's doing. He's actually like a good rich guy, which is basically let's make sure that when people are born, they own assets.

You hate the system if you don't own assets. Why would you like the system if you don't ask? it's fucking awesome if you own assets, right? And so that's the like the thing that I think is really important here today in terms of like how people actually feel about the future. But like so like in a place like Canada though where you have a declining homeownership rate, like the young people like the you get like this generational disparity. And maybe a lot of that resets with like the great wealth transfer and assets being passed from like boomers to the next generation and they'll all get their primary residence off their parents or whatever. But like isn't that that that's a problem that probably needs to be fixed. sooner rather than later, because I think if you have like a growing portion of people who have nothing to lose, right? So like an increasing group of the working poor who can't afford

life and are living hand to mouth and whatever. And then you have a shrinking portion of super wealthy people that have more to lose. Like historically, I don't know if you guys listen to the Revolution's podcast, but like historically, every single one of those ends in revolution, right? And so at what point does this become like a civil unrest issue and like all that, you know, like outside of the economy. Like, yeah, sure, the economy could break and money systems would make it clear that things weren't good. But doesn't it become like a social issue? Like at a certain point, if you let things get too disparate. I think with Canadians, man, I think, you know, at the top, you know, in terms of people who have mobility, they're just going to the U.S.

You know, they're taking their talents to South Beach. Like, you know, to use a LeBron James reference. Like what there has been basically no incentive not to in that scenario. And so I think that's been a huge, huge problem. People always ask me like, what do you? Why are you still in Canada? People ask me that all the time. And there's no there's not, unfortunately, I don't know if there's a really good answer for that. I get, I have a worst taxation policy. The winter sucks. Like all, all this stuff. But like, don't get it wrong. I am like extremely patriotic. and all the stuff, but it's like, it's given people very few incentive structure to stay. And so I think that's just what's been happening.

I know at least with, you know, the circle of people that I hang out with in startup land, they're in SF, you know, like they're in Miami, they're in SF, they're in Austin, they're in Phoenix. That's what I think is happening at scale. Can Canada fix that? You have to go taxation policy. And my friends at the Leaders Fund who run Seymour Shulix Venture Fund here out of Toronto, they're fantastic guys. And they went to Ottawa with actually some real proposals around

how to keep entrepreneurship in Canada, instead of going to start those companies elsewhere. And you just match up like for like policy like QSBS on capital gains. and you really need to actually look hard at those policies when it comes to taxation for capital gains tax to keep people here. That's it. I think it starts there as like the most important piece to keep those folks here. And then, you know, there's a lot of trickle-down effects that happen if people are building companies here rather than, you know, taking their talents to South Beach. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because like our tax structure, I know we're going to wrap up here, but like our tax structure incentivizing, people, we're pretty good at small business. Like we're, you know, like small businesses are taxed very well by comparison to the U.S. that would you be, you know, on a corporate tax structure. But then once you get

beyond that threshold, it jumps up so much that it's like, I literally either I keep my small business small and oh, then we're wondering why nobody wants to grow a business beyond a certain point, or I get above that threshold and I just move to the states, right? Yeah. I have lifetime capital games tax exemption as of 2026 to 1.275 million. Okay. Awesome. Fantastic. We want to the mega company. Where's the next Shopify? You know, those are being created elsewhere by Canadians, by the way. Everyone knows in SF, their most cracked dev is like from the GTA or like Vancouver or Calgary. Everyone, like they all know this. And so that's, that's really what's happening at scale. And I think it starts from that capital gains tax exemption. You mentioned actually that

the tax treatment is actually really good. We don't want the, yes, we love small business. But we're not talking about people who want to just make 1.275 million. We're talking about people who want to make $100 million and create another 10, 10 millionaires with them and employ 8,000 people. Those are the outsized outlier returns that actually matter for the economy. Yeah, well, there's a huge difference in economic productivity between like a small business who's maybe employing like himself and, you know,

like a plumbing company. It's like him and like five guys and five trucks and an administrative assistant. versus a business that's doing hundreds of millions of dollars and creating massive jobs, ecosystems, benefits, et cetera, right? And there's a lot of incentive, like, you know, like Braden said, if you have a small company, you're doing pretty well, you're living a pretty good life. Like, why would you go through all of that?

Like, a lot of people are just, screw this. I'll just keep what I have going. It's pretty sweet, pretty good. I'm happy with my life. Some people want to grow it higher, bigger, like Braden, but if you have that extra barrier, really, it really forces you to really want to. Well, yeah, like we're like, it's just show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome, right?

And we'll wrap it up here. It's like we've incentivized small businesses to stay small because as soon as they cross that threshold, they pay way more taps. So anyway, thank you guys. I appreciate it. This was fun. I got a room full of people here listening. So we got to get to some other presentations. Anything you guys want to leave us with before we, before we wrap up? I mean, one thing I'll say is I think for the most part, no, there's a lot of doom and gloom. But, I still think, even though I think in probabilities, I still think there's a good chance that we build something positive over the next five, 10 years, despite what we're seeing in the world. And it's much better to live in a positive way than doom and gloom. I'll just say that. Yeah, I feel like we're trending in a positive direction, too.

I will leave with, you know, it's Tech Week in Toronto, a lot of predictions. We've thrown out a lot of predictions today. No one knows what's going to happen. Right. So just, you know, kind of have that, have that in the back of your mind. Like, I predict that in the future, I will make more predictions, right? Like, no one knows what's going to happen. So just keep your head up and, you know, who knows that the Leafs might even win a cup in the future. So you know, okay. Well, that one is a little bit. Probably not. That's one of the things that predict will not happen. That one I can predict. Okay. Cool. Thanks, guys. be construed as investment or financial advice. The host and guest featured may own securities or assets discussed on this podcast. Always do your own due diligence or consult with a financial professional before making any financial or investment decisions.