There is no doubting that artificial intelligence (AI) has been a significant driver of stock market growth for several years, particularly in the United States (U.S.). Leading artificial intelligence companies would largely be considered as technology companies, although other sectors and industries benefit from this trend. Someone has to generate all the power to run the computers, after all.

The ongoing housing shortage and rising rents are making it difficult for Canadians, especially young Canadians, to buy or rent a home of their own. This situation gets a little better if young people are willing to split a two-bedroom with a partner or roommate. But even then, renter households are still spending nearly half of their pre-tax income on rent alone in these cities.

Often, we’re asked for our perspective on investment-related concepts from the popular press.

This week, we talk about walled gardens and structures in the investment industry that can keep you trapped in suboptimal investment products.

Every time you turn around, you’ll hear another investor or industry analyst say something like, “This time, it’s different.”

Saying this is about as useful as a wooden frying pan, because economic conditions are never exactly the same. Take today, for instance. There has never been a time in history when the U.S. was imposing massive tariffs on its trading partners and other countries, war was being waged in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and China, India, and Russia were cozying up diplomatically and economically.

One of the things we try to do with each weekly (only you, dear reader, know if we are successful) is to eliminate some of the jargon that plagues our industry and acts as a barrier to understanding financial concepts. If more people did this, maybe there wouldn’t be so many people who think that tariffs are paid by foreign governments. But we digress.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thinks the artificial intelligence (AI) market is in a bubble.

In his opinion, we are in a phase where investors are overexcited about AI and that is when bubbles happen. Altman appears to compare this situation with the infamous dot-com bubble of the early 2000s, which ended in a stock market crash that resulted from massive investor enthusiasm for internet-based companies during the late 1990s.

Remember the story about Goldilocks and the three bears? Ultimately, she found a bowl of porridge that was not too hot, not too cold, but “just right.” And, on the face of it, it may be what investors see as fitting for where the United States (U.S.) stock markets (and other major global markets) are currently, despite President Trump’s increasingly aggressive use of executive power when it comes to tariffs.

In 2008, I was in a car, travelling to a conference in Calgary with a colleague. We were listening to some rock-and-roll station. They really are the same in every city in Canada, aren’t they? Anyway, the disc jockey (radio announcer for the younger readers) was talking about how the Canadian dollar had just passed “par” with the U.S. dollar, so it would be a great time to invest.

A word of caution: I don’t recommend taking advice from rock-and-roll radio DJs

Tariffs continue to dominate the news cycle.

It appears that the use of the U.S. economy as leverage to push countries to accept tariffs of 15 to 20 per cent to do business with the United States is the new normal. However, continuing to insist that someone other than the U.S. consumer ultimately pays the tariffs is simply incorrect.

The result is that the tariffs are acting like a value-added tax.

Given how the markets have recovered from the tariff-induced volatility of Q2 2025, asking how they will fare in the second half of 2025 may seem like a trick question. The markets have been incredibly resilient, weathering the tense conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, relentless attacks on the Federal Reserve’s independence and tariff-on, tariff-off policies.