It’s a bittersweet day in The Margin newsroom – Jenna Zaitchik, our beloved Senior Creative Designer, departs for an exciting new role that we know she’ll do great in. We considered ordering an aggressive cake for the occasion, but we opted to take the high road: secretly crying at our desks. We’ll be fine. Eventually. Probably. (In all seriousness, good luck, Jenna! We’ll miss you!)

– Kat Angus, Deputy Editor

The takeaway: An excellent week for the markets. The S&P 500 and the Dow achieved record highs thanks to a rally around AI and semiconductor stocks, and even the energy-heavy TSX got love from investors. The Nasdaq also saw a big jump, though it’s still recovering from its summer slump. As always, past performance doesn’t guarantee future results, so enjoy the surges while you can.

AI investment may be getting wobbly in the US and Asia, but here in Canada, investors are apparently feeling more confident. Both Shopify (TSX:SHOP) and Brookfield (TSX:BAM) held earnings calls Wednesday, and both had positive AI-related news to announce. 

Shopify reported a US$3.6 billion revenue boost, resulting in a 16% spike to its share price. If the company is to be believed, the impressive numbers are largely thanks to Shopify's in-house AI models that make buying and selling stuff easier than ever before. On the selling side, its ‘Sidekick’ assistant helps vendors set up their virtual stalls and provides analytics on sales. Buyers can be assisted by the ‘Catalog’ agent, which “enhances” merchants’ product data to help guide customers towards the right products.

The same day, asset management giant Brookfield swaggered in with even greater gains, reporting that it raised US$77 billion worth of investment in Q2 alone. Investment in AI infrastructure only accounted for about 6% of that, but CEO Connor Teskey said it was the company’s “largest and fastest-growing theme” – surprising, given the growing skepticism around AI investment. Brookfield is pitching itself as a kinder, more responsible AI investor – the kind that prefers realistic proposals over, say, Kevin O'Leary turning Utah into a giant data centre. So far, the strategy seems to be working: the company expects to hit record profits by the end of this year. 

Meanwhile, Canadian AI darling Cohere announced an expansion into South Korea, its fastest-growing market in Asia-Pacific.

Bottom Line: We’ve been pretty bearish on AI lately, but news like this is actually encouraging. The most frustrating aspect of the AI bubble is that there are tangible and exciting solutions being created, but they're effectively drowned out by a cacophony of AI nonsense. Turn the volume down on that just a little, however, and gems may start to emerge.

by Andrea Yu

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

When Abdo Laalami moved from Cannes to Toronto in 2023, he had one goal: buy a place of his own. But at the time, all he could afford was a postage stamp of a studio downtown or a condo in a sleepy suburb, and neither option was all that appealing. So Laalami, a 31-year-old IT specialist, kept his eye on the market and squirrelled away everything he could to save a down payment while he waited.

As the years passed, Laalami was thrilled to see prices on one- and two-bedroom downtown Toronto units begin to fall – the condo bust that everyone was waiting for was finally materializing. By the end of December 2025, Laalami scored a two-bedroom condo in a one-year-old building for $497,000, about 26% off the $699,990 it was originally listed at in May 2024. “It’s definitely a win,” Laalami says of his purchase. “I was able to take advantage of the situation.”

But Laalami’s condo purchase is only a good deal because he's in no rush to sell, and that's the part that the supposed "condo buyers’ market" often leaves out: Condo purchases are usually looked at as a shorter-term prospect for younger people, where they live in it or rent it out for a few years to build equity, then sell it at a profit and upgrade to a house. A 2019 report from Your Neighbourhood Credit Union found that condo owners are more likely to stay in their home for less than five years, while homeowners are more likely to plan on staying for 10 years or more.

For most young buyers, a decade-long commitment isn't part of the plan – Laalami’s an exception. He bought a place that will accommodate changes in his life for the next decade: With two bedrooms, there's plenty of room for a partner to move in, or even to start a family, if that’s where life takes him. “It’s something that is going to fit my needs for the upcoming years,” he says.

His condo purchase mimics the classic “buy and hold” strategy that institutional investors have always relied on. The difference is that massive real estate firms and investors like pension funds can afford to buy hundreds of units at once and wait for the market to recover.

Read more

Kat Angus, Deputy Editor: Recently, the movie trailer for Wicker was released online. No, not another Wicked sequel – this one’s about an unmarried woman (played by Olivia Colman, so you already know it’ll be good) who, instead of getting married, asks a local artisan to craft her a companion made out of wicker (played by Alexander Skarsgård, who can’t resist playing a weirdo). The internet promptly went bazonkers over the trailer, the movie, Olivia Colman, and most of all, the wicker dude himself. I won’t go into more detail here, but look up what people are saying about the movie on social media and you’ll immediately find plenty of enthusiastic, unhinged reactions.

It’s yet another data point proving that in this chaotic year of 2026, audiences are hungry for original stories, and they’re tired of big studio franchises. Obsession, produced for around US$750,000, has made nearly half a billion dollars (USD!) due to word of mouth. So far, Backrooms has raked in nearly US$400 million on a US$10 million budget, making it the highest-grossing movie in distributor A24’s history. Conversely, The Mandalorian and Grogu underperformed, Supergirl was a critical and box office disappointment, and Masters of the Universe barely made it past US$100 million (don’t even mention the live-action Moana).

If Wicker is even a fraction as good as the internet wants it to be, it could be another ‘surprise’ box office success that leaves the big studio releases in the dust. Entertainment executives of all kinds should pay attention – we don’t want more of the same, we want a man made of wicker to romance the crap out of Olivia Colman. 

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: Andrea Yu (writer), 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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