There’s a saying amongst journalists that the best news comes out at 4 p.m. on a Friday: it’s technically working hours, but really, everyone’s all checked out. You might say the same about the second week after the FIFA World Cup, when soccer goes from olé! to passé. No one wants to talk about sportsball anymore, which makes this the perfect time for FIFA to make a secret, US$4.2-billion US deal with Joshua Kushner, brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law. Unfortunately for FIFA, people were paying attention, prompting more howling from fans, regulators, and sports groups than a shocking offside call. We may need to pay attention to soccer for a little while longer.

– Anthony Milton, Content Lead

The takeaway: Canadian markets closed Thursday pretty much flat for the week, with the TSX up 0.21%. In the US, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq barely moved, with the Dow seeing a slight increase. And yet this was a bonkers week for earnings reports and stock prices – more on that below. The TSX's small gain was mainly due to energy and mining, driven by rising gold and oil prices thanks to (surprise!) the seemingly unending US-Iran war.

For the past several years, tech companies and investors had an unspoken, but mutually beneficial, arrangement: the tech companies would invest a ton into AI, and investors would reward them with higher and higher stock prices. But earnings calls this week for five of the biggest players – Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), Meta (NASDAQ:META), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) – indicate investors have added some disclaimers to their end of the deal.

As we mentioned last week, Alphabet's stock plunged more than 7% in a single day after it raised its 2026 capital spending forecast to US$205 billion and, much more concerning, posted negative free cash flow for the first time since the company's 2004 IPO. Meta actually beat revenue expectations and grew 28%, but a pile of legal and severance charges (one-time fees, but still) sank the per-share profit. Combine that with the US$31 billion capex for the quarter and full-year spending guidance going up again, and you get Meta's stock price dropping 10%.

Then Microsoft, which has been having a rough go of it lately, revealed that Azure crossed US$100 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time, capex came in under expectations, and their spending plans for the year basically stayed the same. The result? The stock price leapt 15% on Thursday.

Amazon and Apple posted their earnings Thursday evening. Amazon announced 37% growth in AWS and record operating income, but showed a US$66 billion increase in AI spending and a US$7.6 billion free cash flow deficit. Apple, meanwhile, had its best Q2 ever – record revenue and EPS – but missed targets for services and China sales. It also, notably, said almost nothing about AI spending. In the immediate aftermath, Amazon's after-hours stock price shot up 9%, while Apple's went down.

Bottom Line: Is it glib to say that tech is in its FAFO era? Okay, that’s a bit much, because really, nobody knows yet if AI spending is going to pay off, or if it’ll make the economy crash and burn. You may have your suspicions of which way it’ll go (hell, so do we) but for now, we’re still in the WAFO era: Wait and Find Out.

by Anthony Milton

This is an excerpt of an article originally run in full on The Margin.

In early 2022, Michael Hilliard paid one last visit to the church that had raised him. An imposing gothic building in downtown Toronto, Bloor Street United had known Hilliard since he was baptized there some 50 years prior, and as he walked through the halls, Hilliard passed the rooms where he attended Sunday school as a child, and the enormous sanctuary where he married his wife in 2007. “It’s been the one constant physical space in my entire life,” he says.

The church's history goes back even further. The main bulk of the building was first completed in 1890, over 125 years ago, and survived a devastating fire in 1954. But Bloor Street United's days were numbered: Within weeks of Hilliard's last visit, wrecking crews would begin tearing much of it down. Today, all that's left of the venerable old church is its stone walls, stained black by a century of city pollution. They’ve been retained as a façade while the rest of the building is gutted, and an enormous office and residential building goes up overhead.

Hilliard is at peace with the demolition of his church. After all, it was partially his idea.

For decades, the congregation had watched its numbers dwindle while costs rose; rather than folding completely, it found another way to survive. Hilliard, a lawyer, became the volunteer chair of the church’s redevelopment committee, and helped finalize the deal to sell part of the church's land to a developer. In exchange, Bloor Street United will persist: it’ll keep a chunk of land on the site, and will get brand-new space.

Redevelopments like these are becoming increasingly common across Canadian cities, as shrinking churches cash in on their land value in order to stay solvent. Their efforts are unlocking tens of millions of dollars in real estate, creating potential windfalls for developers, while also allowing the churches to negotiate adding key social services, like affordable housing, into the new buildings. These pacts of God and capital have given rise to a new kind of YIMBY: the Yes in God’s Backyard (YIGBY) movement, where the houses of God are transformed into the condos of thousands.

Read more

Anthony Milton, Content Lead: I have a confession to make: I am terrible at watching movies. Not in the sense that I scroll on my phone or ask a million questions as the thing is playing – I’m not an animal – but rather, I just can’t bring myself to actually sit down and strap in for the ride. A movie needs to be pretty special to make me watch the whole thing. So it’s notable that I’m even considering seeing Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, a film apparently so spectacular that it’s filling once-empty theatres and making tickets here in Toronto really hard to get. The popcorn gods are cruel.

The fact that I even care about seeing The Odyssey probably has more to do with the cultural moment than the film itself. For one thing, it released just in time for AMC’s earnings report, which unveiled big numbers thanks to the hype (turns out it’s not just a meme stock after all). For another, by virtue of being in IMAX, The Odyssey has made film a perishable commodity once again: unlike with most films, seeing this in an IMAX theatre is an experience that can’t be replicated on a home TV, and therefore gives the cinemas a reason to exist. That alone makes it a movie worth watching, especially in the era of cape slop and lazy sequels – even by my ridiculous standards.

From The Margin group chat:

If you liked this newsletter, hated this newsletter, or are totally indifferent to it, hit the reply button and tell us why! We’re so lonely.

This week’s contributors: Tyler Haw (audience engagement), Jenna Zaitchik (senior creative designer), Shazia Khan (social media strategy manager), Anthony Milton (content lead), Kat Angus (deputy editor), and Eric Wainwright (editor in chief).

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