This week’s Ticker Take

Our long-form video this week features Markus Hansen, portfolio manager at Vontobel, breaking down 5 luxury stocks built to stand the test of time. Hermès and the Birkin bag, Ferrari and the prancing horse, Richemont, Brunello Cucinelli, and (surprisingly) Formula One.

We opened this one in full character. Jon in a “rented” fur coat asking if it made him look rich. Both of us sipping sparkling juice out of champagne flutes. The whole bit: you can play the lifestyle, but you can actually own the stocks.

Markus made the case that luxury is one of the strangest corners of the market. The best brands sell less on purpose to protect scarcity, and that scarcity is what gives them real pricing power. Good excuse to talk myself into wanting a Birkin. Lol. Not.

AI Under the Hood

Two this week, both mine. I covered Nvidia raising prices 15% for its clients, plus an earnings preview ahead of the big day.

Then a second one on neocloud companies that might IPO, and how that ties back into the Nvidia story.

The Week

Sunday was a genuinely chill day. Laundry, catching up, doing nothing in particular, and loving it.

Monday: kickboxing, The Take Down went out, Jon did his morning hits plus BNN Bloomberg, he also went on the Caleb Silver podcast, and we filmed this week’s Ticker Take episode plus that week’s AI Under the Hood.

Tuesday: haircut and color day. Reader, the highlights. The depth. I am obsessed.

I recorded my second AI Under the Hood for the week on Neocloud companies. I took my daughter to an open gym volleyball session.

Wednesday: skipped kickboxing thanks to some weird head pains. Also, Nvidia earnings day. My parents took the girls to lunch at Kasa Moto in Yorkville. So nice!

And I took my daughter to another volleyball open gym at night. These gyms are NOT close friends.

Thursday: Reformer Pilates with my older daughter, a walk, a chat. Then back to work! Shot another long-form video on Nvidia’s Ripple Effect. Nvidia crushed earnings, and we did a deep dive on the 5 Stocks that benefit. Watch it here:

Friday: Strategy, calls, work, productions. Getting the Nvidia video turned around and birthed into the world in less than 24 hours. Thumbnail testing. And finally had time to take my girls Back-to-school shopping. Delayed because of work, but we got there. Better late than never.

Saturday: Jet skiing up north with the fam. Nice to be on the open water.

Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM

We’re retiring this section, Reader. Turns out I go to bed so early now that there’s no PM left to report on.

The Wins This Week

New hair color. The highlights alone were worth the chair time.

The Losses This Week

Skipped kickboxing on Wednesday. Weird head pains won that round.

The Takeaway

Some weeks are champagne and fur coats on camera, and laundry and volleyball pickups off camera. Usually both in the same 24 hours.

P.S. Jon’s Substack is where the actual market thinking lives; subscribe if you haven’t already.

Hi, it’s Caroline.

This week was a full one. Three kickboxing classes, a physio appointment, an orthodontist emergency, fur coats (more on that in a minute), and a camp counsellor who made it to the finish line.

Let’s get into it.

This Week on Ticker Take

Bruce Campbell is back. If you watched his first appearance, you’ll remember he doesn’t do vague. This time he’s talking about how he hunts for the next Nvidia and which small-cap stocks he likes right now.

Two things stood out to me. First, his whole framework is built on a book called The Art of Execution, and he walks through how he actually applies it. Second, he’s been an assassin since we last had him on. He’s cut a lot of his positions. Hearing a guy who loves finding ideas talk about which ones he killed and why is, honestly, the more useful half of the conversation.

Watch the video here:

AI Under the Hood

This week’s episode was on Anthropic: their earnings, their valuation and the IPO everyone is now circling.

The numbers are hard to wrap your head around. Second quarter revenue came in at $11.5 billion. A year ago it was $787 million. That’s roughly a 14-fold jump in twelve months, and they turned an adjusted profit doing it. Growth like that means one thing for the rest of the industry: a lot more spending on compute.

Then there’s the IPO. Bankers are floating a $2 trillion valuation. The catch is that number hinges on a projection that Anthropic pulls in up to $200 billion in revenue by 2028. So the valuation isn’t really a bet on what they are today. It’s a bet on that 2028 number being real.

The market read it as an AI demand story, not just an Anthropic story. Nvidia, Micron and AMD all moved up on the news.

I filmed this one Monday, edited it Monday, and it went out Monday.

The Week

Monday. Back to kickboxing after the weekend. Then a full day of filming. We interviewed our guest for next week’s video and did a shoot I am genuinely excited for you to see. Think fur. Think champagne. Think designer bags. Think Jon in fur. Don’t hate us if you hate fur. I also filmed, edited and published AI Under the Hood. Big Monday.

Tuesday. Biz calls and chats, and my first visit to the physio for my knee. He actually diagnosed it: pes anserine bursitis, with possibly a little meniscus business on the side. I walked out with at-home exercises and a plan. Next up is tension release, cupping and acupuncture, none of which I’ve ever done, so I’m curious. Also, my knee has been totally fine all week. Murphy’s law. Seek help, and the problem sorts itself out.

Wednesday. Kickboxing again. Work, work, work. The house got cleaned (yay). Then I picked up Cali from camp, and we headed to my parents’ for dinner with my aunt and cousin, in from Ottawa. I hadn’t seen them in far too long, and my sister’s family was there too. My cousin is an actress and just landed a part in a show called Twisted Metal.

Thursday. Long accounting call, then a sprint to reformer pilates, which meant I was a couple of minutes late. The instructor was lovely about it. I spent the class copying the woman next to me, since I have not done reformer pilates in years, and it turns out she’s an instructor at one of those very social-media-famous pilates studios in Berlin, just visiting. I picked the right person to copy. The Bruce Campbell video dropped. And I took Quinn to the orthodontist because she already broke a bracket on her new braces over the weekend in Collingwood. She was so upset. Totally no big deal; they fixed it lickety-split. Then more calls: strategy, content, partners, ad work, agent chats.

Friday. Cali finished her month as a full camp counsellor. Her first real job. It was exhausting, and she did it.

Kickboxing, calls, accounting work, scripts, and this newsletter. Ribs for dinner, bought pre-marinated from Rowe because I did not have time to marinate anything this week. But I did buy Kkwari-gochu peppers at our local market and made those on Thursday night. They were so good, I hopped back in and bought another bag! Then I did a repeat on Friday night with the ribs. A little EVOO, lemon juice, sea salt, and low-sodium soy sauce—and voilà! We played a game with lots of laughs and watched a movie. A perfect Friday night.

Saturday. I went to puppy yoga with my girls. We did yoga with American bully puppies, and it was so much fun! I randomly bumped into an old friend from theatre school, and it was lovely to reconnect. Endorphin- and oxytocin-filled, we left happier than when we arrived.

I looked it up, and puppy yoga triggers the D.O.S.E. effect. The D.O.S.E effect is the simultaneous release of dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. Definitely felt that.

In the evening, we celebrated Jon’s dad’s birthday and his parents’ anniversary with our niece, who is heading to school in Spain soon. It was nice to see her before her big adventure. We played the game again, and we had more laughs. It was a lovely way to end the week.

Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM

Jon’s AM. Up before the market. BNN Bloomberg hits from the home studio, jogs, Global X shoots, Camp runs with Cali, work.

Caroline’s PM. So I am getting old. It is official. I am going to bed earlier and earlier. This night owl is officially retiring, it seems. I have spent this week watching Sterling Point and The Shards with my teen girls. Bonding matters, and these shows are it.

The Wins This Week

• A diagnosis. After weeks of wondering, my knee has a name. Pes anserine bursitis. Having a plan beats guessing.

• Cali made it. A full month as a camp counsellor, done.

• A luxe shoot in the can. Fur, champagne, bags, Jon. You’ll see.

• Three kickboxing classes plus Pilates. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. A real streak. Thursday - Pilates. After missing a week of exercise with my cold, it was nice to be back at it!

• Family time. My aunt and cousin from Ottawa, Jon’s parents’ double celebration, and my sister’s family all in one week.

The Losses This Week

• A broken bracket. Quinn’s braces lasted one weekend before needing a fix. Fixed in minutes, but she was crushed for an hour.

• Late to Pilates. A couple of minutes, but still. I don’t like being late, especially for something I have not done in a while.

• No time to marinate. Store-bought ribs. It was a week.

The Takeaway

I spent weeks putting off the physio because my knee was annoying but not bad. Then I went, got a plan, and the knee immediately behaved. Bruce Campbell cut a pile of positions since we last saw him and sounds better for it. Cali wrapped up her month as a camp counsellor and discovered a few surprising things about the person she’s becoming.

The lesson is the same in all three. You don’t find out what’s actually going on until you go and do the thing.

See you next week. Bring champagne. Joking. I can’t drink champagne anymore. Or wine, really. Getting old is interesting, to say the least. I have pulled back a lot on alcohol, and I feel better. It is poison, so that’s a win. I can only drink ONE kind of wine now - Pinot Grigio - and it has to be a specific one, or no dice. Anyway, sorry for the alcohol rant. See you next week!

Caroline

P.S. Jon’s Substack is where the market stats live. If you want the numbers, that’s the place to go.

Hi, it’s Caroline.

This issue is brought to you by tea, halls, and the healing power of a fresh manicure. I was under the weather this week. My Oura ring stopped giving me gentle “turn on rest mode” and started flashing “major signs of strain.” Did the work stop? Nope! The content machine keeps grinding. More on that below.

This Week on Ticker Take: 8 Founder-Led Stocks

Our new long-form video features Michael Monaghan, and the whole episode is built around one big idea: does it matter who’s in charge of the company you’re buying?

Michael thinks it matters a lot, and he spent more than 20 years in institutional finance, with stops at Goldman Sachs, UBS, and Carlyle. But here’s the part that makes him the perfect guest for this one: he’s also been a founder himself. He built and ran a defence technology company for over a decade. So he’s sat on both sides of the table.

His thesis is what we call the Founder Factor, a theme we’ve explored before on Ticker Take. Companies still run by the people who built them tend to think longer-term and take bigger swings, because the person at the top has the conviction and the authority to do it. The research backs it up too. Consulting firm Bain found that founder-led companies delivered returns more than 3 times better than non-founder-led companies over a 25-year period.

Michael walked us through eight names where the founder is still at the helm: Oracle, Meta, Palantir, Dell, Capital One, Bloom Energy, Waste Connections, and Kodiak Gas Services. My favourite part of the episode are the origin stories. Larry Ellison starting Oracle with 1,200 dollars in 1977. Michael Dell building PCs in a University of Texas dorm room. A former NASA scientist who designed a device to make oxygen on Mars, then ran it backward to generate electricity on Earth.

As always, not financial advice. You can watch it here:

AI Under the Hood

A couple of issues back, we talked about circular AI money. This week, Nvidia decided to make the circle a lot bigger.

On Monday, Nvidia announced partnerships with six of the biggest names on Wall Street: Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR. The goal is to mobilize more than $ 500 billion in third-party capital to finance AI infrastructure.

Jensen Huang’s framing is that AI compute is now an “investable asset class.” Think of it like commercial real estate or toll roads: infrastructure you can finance, with revenue attached. He also told CNBC he approached exactly six firms for this, and not one of them said no.

It’s a genuinely fascinating structure. The demand for AI infrastructure is so enormous that even Nvidia doesn’t want it all sitting on its own balance sheet. Whether you find that reassuring or a little scary probably says a lot about where you stand on this whole AI buildout.

The Week

Monday. Kickboxing: cancelled by me, on account of being a human petri dish. But we still filmed our Ticker Take episode in the afternoon, plus an AI Under the Hood that I delivered while noticeably stuffy. If you watch closely, you can hear my sinuses fighting for their lives.

Tuesday. Cancelled my knee physio. Quick backstory: I have knee tendonitis dating back to 2011, when I did a hardcore boot camp far too soon after having a baby. Fifteen years later, it still comes back to haunt me. Let my knee be a lesson to all new moms everywhere: the relaxin is real.

Wednesday. Kickboxing, cancelled again. My coach Stephen is starting to think I quit on him, but he might be the one who gave me this, so I’m blaming him. ;) “Might” is the key word. There are a hundred viruses going around right now, and with both my girls in camp, all bets are off on where this one came from.

The rest of the week. Tea, long sleeps, and Zoom calls with my camera off. Somewhere in the fog, I also wrote the script for next week’s video, because the content calendar does not care about your immune system. Calls with our agent. Our video dropped. Thumbnail testing. And one small act of self-care: a new buttery yellow manicure. By Friday, I was finally feeling better!

The weekend. Friday night we picked up Cali after her long day of work and headed north. Being in the country is so soothing. Goats, fields, fresh air. A chance to breathe. A weekend at my sister’s place in Collingwood with my family was exactly what the doctor ordered, if I had actually gone to see a doctor. Beach, pool, cider house, hot tub, meals, funny dogs, games and loads of laughs! Killed at Bocce ball and handstands in the pool. My mom on the swing at 78 was such an adorable sight. A couple pics here:

Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM

Jon’s AM: Every single camp drive, all week, both directions. Not one complaint. Okay, maybe one.

Caroline’s PM: In bed early enough that I have no idea what happens on television after 10 pm anymore. My Oura ring was very proud of me by Friday.

The Wins This Week

• The episode got made. Not feeling 100%, but we filmed Monday, and it turned out great.

• Next week is already written. Script done, in a haze, but done.

• The video dropped. Plus thumbnail testing to see what actually gets your attention. Open to suggestions.

• Buttery yellow. Ten out of ten manicure decision. And the internet has assured me it is a strong fashion choice into the fall with a chocolate brown satin skirt. And even with black. This yellow is NOT the bumblebee look.

The Losses This Week

• Kickboxing, all three. At this rate my gloves are decorative.

• Physio, cancelled. Sorry, 2011 knee. Next week.

• My Oura ring’s feelings. “Major signs of strain” is a harsh thing to read before coffee.

The Takeaway

You can plan a content calendar. You cannot plan a head cold. This week was a reminder that the work gets done anyway, just slower, with more tea, and occasionally with the camera off. Be kind to your body when it asks.

See you next Monday.

Caroline

P.S. If you want Jon’s weekly dose of business history and market stats, his Substack is the place. Tell him I sent you.

Hi, it’s Caroline.

Well, the long weekend delivered. Patio nights, porch wine, a rainy Saturday that turned out to be just what the doctor ordered. And then the week hit like a freight train. Let’s get into it.

This Week on Ticker Take

We sat down with Matt Orton to break down 8 “Trendsetter” stocks for the world’s top mega-trends. This video showcases which companies are actually positioned for the biggest shifts happening in markets right now, and not just the ones getting the loudest headlines, this is the one to watch.

AI Under the Hood

This week’s short: Palantir. The stock jumped 27% on the back of a genuinely impressive quarter. The video details what drove the pop and why the quarter turned so many heads. Shot it Tuesday, edited it Tuesday, and released it Tuesday.

The Week

Friday: Kicked off the long weekend at the Balmy Beach Club patio. It is local and was the perfect beginning to the long weekend.

Saturday: The girls were off with friends! One went shopping at the Eaton Centre downtown, the other had a sleepover. So we had that mini “empty nest” feeling, which always terrifies me slightly, lol. Then I caught myself wondering why, since it all started with just the two of us. Funny how our comfort zones can get so comfy.Humans are resilient and adaptable by nature, though, and I’m always reminding myself and my kids of that whenever we’re faced with change. Embrace it. Change is good. Anyway, I digress. Jon and I had wine and popcorn on the porch while it rained, and it was kind of amazing. I cannot recommend it enough.

Sunday: A long beach walk, and a day of getting organized after all the travel/work. Laundry too. Not glamorous but necessary.

Tuesday: Back to reality. Cali was back at camp, and here’s the headline: Quinn started as a CIT. First real job energy in this house and we are so proud. Meanwhile, Jon and I were strategizing, on calls, and shooting. We shot tops and tails for our next episode, and I got AI Under the Hood filmed, edited and released on the same day.

Wednesday: Work and calls. Kickboxing got cancelled because the instructor was sick, which I chose to interpret as the universe protecting my Wednesday. Because that night we went to see The Great Gatsby at Mirvish, in from Broadway for a couple of weeks only. While I was getting ready, I put on a white hairband to do my makeup, and I never took it off because it seemed to work well and fit the theme!

Thursday: First-ever Pilates reformer class in a while. I used to do pilates all the time. Had a membership when we lived in NYC and did reformer classes when we lived in LA. Was nice to be back.

Friday: Kickboxing was back on, then a murder-mystery dinner night with the neighbours at The Old Mill. We dressed for a wedding and fun was had!!!

Saturday: Pretty chill day. Caught up on a guilty pleasure. Brain drain TV, I like to call it. Binged “Let’s Marry Harry” on Netflix and then was officially angry at Netflix when my Netflix and Chill came to an abrupt halt! They aren’t releasing the final episode until August 12th!!! Later that evening while enjoying some chianti on the porch, I decided to Google the ending. No patience to wait 4 days.

Sunday: An old car show with my fam, my sister’s fam and my mom and dad. The highlight of the whole week: I got to drive in my dad’s 1931 Ford Model A. Ninety-five years old and still turning heads.

Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM

Jon’s AM: Up early with the markets, prepping the Orton conversation and watching the Palantir numbers roll in before most of the street had coffee.

Caroline’s PM: Editing bay until dinner, then trading the timeline for Gatsby, a reformer class, and a murder to solve. Balance!!! Work hard, play hard.

The Wins This Week

Quinn’s first week as a CIT. Watching your kid clock in for the first time is special.

Palantir timing. The quarter dropped, the stock popped, and we had a short out the next day.

The Matt Orton video. Eight stocks, top mega-trends. A great watch.

The Model A. Some wins are just pure joy.

The Losses This Week

Kickboxing, round one. Cancelled on Wednesday. The universe gave, the universe took.

The post-travel pile. An entire Sunday sacrificed to the to-do list.

The Takeaway

We spent the whole week talking about trendsetters. The stocks riding tomorrow’s mega-trends, the companies everyone will be chasing in five years. And then Sunday I climbed into a 1931 Ford Model A, which was once the most disruptive product in the world. Trends change, and the good ones become classics. The trick, in markets and in life, is knowing which is which. Which is not always easy.

See you next Monday.

Caroline

P.S. If you want Jon’s take on the markets in his own words, his Substack is where he puts it. Go subscribe. Tell him I sent you.

Hi, it’s Caroline.

This week’s theme is circles. The money in AI is apparently going in circles. Our car is going in circles driving our 15-year-old daughter to camp and back for her summer job as a camp counsellor. Thank goodness the long weekend is coming up. I plan to be walking in slow circles around the backyard with a coffee, doing absolutely nothing.

This Week on Ticker Take

Our long-form video this week was 9 Home Run Growth Stocks with Ash from WatchMojo. Nine big swing names. Check it out here:

AI Under the Hood

The Wall Street journal reported that Nvidia is in talks to offer financing for a large OpenAI data center project in Ohio. And a bunch of that money will find its way back to Nvidia. The data center will be full of Nvidia chips

“Round and round we go” Michael Burry said.

Some people call it building the AI ecosystem. Others hear echoes of 1999. Watch here:

Live on NYSE TV, From Our Home Studio

On Tuesday morning, we were live on NYSE TV talking quantum computing. It was super cool, and I loved every second of it.

On Sunday morning, we launched our deep dive on IonQ, featuring our interview with the company’s CFO and COO, Inder Singh. Quantum computing is one of those topics that sounds intimidating until you do a deep dive. We did it for you. Watch here:

The Week

Saturday: The Blossom event. Great time.

Sunday: The IonQ video launched in the morning.

Monday: Phone calls, deal flow, producing, editing.

Tuesday: The NYSE TV hit live. Still smiling about it.

Wednesday and Thursday: More editing, more calls, and the daily camp counsellor drives. Our older daughter has a summer job and we have a job as a driver. 4 HOURS A DAY. (2 hours round trip each way)

Friday: Birthday shopping with my mom and dad The best. Scored a cute satin brown dress for fall from Aritzia, Santorini Ouai perfume and rare beauty exhilarate highlighter!

Saturday and Sunday: A long weekend and finally a break. Do not call us.

Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM

Jon’s AM: Global X videos, a Globe and Mail piece, BNN hits and articles. The man was working hard.

Caroline’s PM: Editing, invoicing, kickboxing, the dog groomer, and the camp counsellor car service.

The Wins This Week

• The NYSE hit.

• IonQ, launched.

• Ash from WatchMojo.

• Birthday shopping with my mom.

• The dog got groomed.

The Losses This Week

• Rest.

• The gas tank.

• Invoicing.

The Takeaway

Sometimes AI money goes in circles, and sometimes our lives do too. The trick is noticing when the circle is actually a good one. A daughter with a summer job, a business that keeps us busy, a live hit from the home studio. We’ll take that loop any day.

See you next Monday.

Caroline

P.S. If you want Jon’s daily market numbers and stories from business history, his Substack is where they live. Subscribe and tell him Caroline sent you.

Hi, it’s Caroline.

Last week I wrote to you from a balcony in Paris. This week I’m writing to you from Toronto at 4 am, because jet lag is real. It’s been an exhausting transition, but worth every minute.

This week’s Ticker Take video

Eric Jackson joined us for this week’s long form, which dropped on Thursday. Eric loves hunting for 100-baggers. He looks for the kind of stock that turns a small position into a life-changing one. We spoke to him about how he spots them early, what’s worked, what hasn’t, and where he’s looking right now. If you like thinking in decades instead of quarters, this one’s for you.

AI Under the Hood

This week I went under the hood on the AI race out of China. Moonshot AI launched its Kimi K3 model, and it gave other LLM’s a run for their money. The interesting part isn’t the size race. Alibaba owns a stake in Moonshot, and what makes it interesting is that it is cheaper and faster, which says a lot about where all of this is headed.

The Week

Monday. A plane from Paris to Toronto, landing late at night with four tired humans. We were technically home, but spiritually still on the Croisette. Soaking in that vitamin D and sea air.

Tuesday, we were straight back to the grind. I was at the dermatologist getting a couple of spots checked. Ruled out basal cell, so that was a good thing. This is your friendly reminder to book the appointment you’ve been putting off. Jon was at Global X and back in work mode. In between: catching up, production, watching edits, filming this week’s AI Under the Hood, sifting through deals, unpacking, and laundry.

Wednesday, I did kickboxing in the morning, then work and more work, until Jon’s phone lit up with an automated message from his mom’s iPhone. He’s her emergency contact, and the phone detected a crash and pinned the location. We drove straight there, and when we arrived, I was shocked to see that the car had rolled!!!

We spent much of the night talking to firefighters, police, and doctors, sitting in a hospital hallway between a man who’d just had staples put in his scalp and a lineup of other tough nights, waiting on CT scans and answers. His parents are okay, but we are still exhaling.

Thursday. Our youngest got her braces on and picked turquoise elastics. An elite choice. Meanwhile our other daughter had spent Wednesday and Thursday turning the kitchen into a bakery: pumpkin spice muffins filled and frosted with cream cheese, plus a batch of chocolate cookies. We did not survive them. Zero regrets. Our Eric Jackson episode went live in the afternoon. And that night I caught up with an old friend visiting from LA over dinner at Kasa Moto, and brought my girls along. Some friendships pick up right where they left off, no matter how many years or miles in between.

Friday, I had kickboxing again in the morning, then work and calls, and the jazz festival in the evening. Always love walking to the jazz festival in our neighbourhood. Good music and good vibes. A week that started on a plane, easing into live music.

Saturday. Blossom Social, and what a day. Jon hosted a game show at the Global X booth and spoke on a panel about the macro landscape. We had our own booth too, where we asked people about their best and worst investments ever, and the answers did not disappoint. We handed out pens, stickers, and merch from our Ticker Take money bag, even though our originally planned merch got held up at the border. Jon’s money suit was also a fiasco. It wasn’t made in time, so two days before the event I sourced a replacement suit online that happened to fit like it was custom-made! We talked investing with so many great people, hung out with ACE, the Blue Jays mascot, danced more than expected, and generally rode the energy of a stadium full of people who love this stuff as much as we do. Then we capped the night with wine and cheese at our neighbours’ place.

From hospital hallway to game show host in seventy-two hours. That’s the week.

Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM

Jon’s AM: Headlines, Global X, and digging out from two weeks or emails.

Caroline’s PM: Editing, publishing, and keeping the Ticker Take operation moving through a week with of curveballs.

The Wins This Week

A clean bill of health from the dermatologist. Jon’s parents walking away from that accident okay. Turquoise elastics. Crash detection on a phone, a feature we never wanted to test, doing its job perfectly. And the whole Blossom Social day, start to finish.

The Losses This Week

Jet lag that refuses to leave. Our merch stuck at the border. And Wednesday. Not every loss needs a joke attached.

The takeaway

Set up your emergency contacts. Turn on crash detection. It takes two minutes, and this week it mattered in our family. Some weeks remind you what actually matters, and this was one of them.

P.S. Jon’s Substack is where the market analysis lives. Subscribe here.

Hi, it’s Caroline.

Reader, I am writing this to you slightly sunburned, thoroughly walked out, and still not entirely convinced last week actually happened. We took the girls to France for ten days. Paris, then the south. And somewhere between the Louvre and Monaco, I stopped checking my phone long enough to remember why we work the way we do the rest of the year.

Also, it was hot. We will get to the heat. Oh, we will get to the heat.

This week’s Ticker Take

Before we get to the croissants, the show went on. Our Thursday long form is Adam Parker with 7 Stocks That Actually Play Defense. Adam is one of the sharpest minds we’ve had on the show, and with markets feeling jumpy, a defense-first lineup felt like exactly the right conversation. We filmed and built this one before we left, scheduled it, and crossed our fingers from another continent. It’s live now and worth your time.

AI Under the Hood

Confession time. Because of my travels, this week’s AI Under the Hood was not a video. It was an Instagram carousel, about 3Mand Microsoft teaming up to explore AI adoption. Interesting story. Solid graphics.

It failed miserably.

At last count, it had been liked by Jon and our two daughters. That is the entire list. My own family, out of pity or loyalty or both. So here is my formal plea: if you would like to make my week, go give that carousel a like. Let’s get it to double digits. Dream big.

The Week: A Postcard from France

Paris. We did the Louvre and Versailles in one day. One day, Reader. I do not recommend this and I would absolutely do it again. We walked the Champs-Élysées, stood under the Arc de Triomphe, and took a cruise down the Seine, which I can confirm is the correct way to see Paris when your legs have filed a formal complaint. Planes, trains, and boats, we took them all.

The history. The girls got a crash course in Marie Antoinette, Napoleon, and centuries of French history. We also learned how they used the toilettes back then, which I will not describe here, but which generated more questions from our daughters than the entire French Revolution.

The heat. It was approximately one million degrees. The sweaty walking was constant. At several points I was nearly carried off in a body bag. And because The Take Down is about keeping things real: yes, there was family bickering. The heat made us all a little insane. Constant walking, a million degrees, and four hangry people looking for the next meal. That’s the part the postcards leave out.

My birthday. July 14. Which, if you know your French holidays, is Bastille Day. This year the fireworks happened a night early, on the 13th, so we watched an entire city light up the sky from our balcony.

Once in a lifetime epic. Then midnight hit, the calendar flipped to my birthday, and my family sang happy birthday to me right there on the balcony. I have decided this was all arranged for me personally. Thank you, France. You shouldn’t have.

The south. We took a train rolling through the French countryside to the Côte d’Azur. Cannes, Nice, Monaco. Three postcards in one stretch of coastline. The girls giggled their way through all of it, and honestly, so did we. The family laughing fits were the real souvenir.

The money. Reader, the wealth on the Riviera is something else. Mega yachts stacked in the harbors like parking lots. A million Birkins. Chanel on every arm. We cover money for a living and even we were staring. It turned into a real conversation with the girls about the luxury economy: Hermès and LVMHtrading in Paris, Ferrari on the NYSE under the ticker RACE. When your family vacation doubles as a stock lesson, you know what business you’re in. Somewhere out there is a Ticker Take episode about the luxury economy just waiting to be made.

The Wins This Week

• Bastille Day fireworks from our balcony, then a midnight happy birthday from my family. Once in a lifetime.

• The Louvre and Versailles in one day. A terrible idea, executed perfectly.

• Cannes, Nice, and Monaco. The Riviera lived up to every bit of the hype.

• Planes, trains, and boats.All of the above, including trains through the French countryside.

• The people watching.Mega yachts and a million Birkins. Free entertainment.

• Family giggles. So many. The best part of the whole trip.

• New Thursday video: 7 Stocks That Actually Play Defense with Adam Parker. Watch it.

• The content machine ran without us. Everything scheduled before we left actually went out. Miracles happen.

The Losses This Week

• The heat: Brutal. Body bag adjacent.

• The hangry bickering:Real. We are keeping it real.

• My step count: Technically a win. My feet disagree.

• The 3M and Microsoft carousel: Three likes. All of them related to me. Go fix this.

The Takeaway

We spend our weeks measuring everything. Views, likes, subscribers, watch time. Then you spend one evening on a balcony in Paris watching fireworks with your family, and none of the numbers come with you. The carousel got three likes and the week was still perfect. Turns out the metrics that matter most don’t have a dashboard.

Back to the studio this week. Talk soon.

Caroline

P.S. If you’re not already subscribed to Jon’s Ticker TakeSubstack, that’s where the investing side of this operation lives. Go sign up.

This issue is coming to you a little more buttoned up than usual, because I actually scheduled it ahead of time. I know. Growth. Here’s what we made for you this week.

The big one: Barry Ritholtz on the biggest mistakes investors make

Thursday’s episode is one I think everyone should watch, whether you’ve been investing for thirty years or thirty days. Jon sat down with Barry Ritholtz to break down the biggest mistakes investors make. The ones that quietly cost you money for years without you ever noticing. It’s the kind of conversation that makes you want to open your portfolio and take a hard look. Watch it here.

AI Under the Hood: SK Hynix comes to the Nasdaq

Monday’s AI Under the Hood was all about SK Hynix listing on the Nasdaq. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because I picked it as my favorite stock for 2026, back when you needed a Korean brokerage account to buy it. Now it’s a ticker away. I break down what the listing means and why this company sits at the center of the AI memory story. Watch it here.

And a tease

Monday we had Eric Jackson in the studio. All I’ll say is: it’s going to be a good one. Keep an eye out.

The Week

Monday. Kickboxing at dawn, home, showered, and camera-ready in record time, because we had Eric Jackson arriving at the studio. I was pulling double duty: on camera hosting with Jon, and running camera and sound.

Then Jon headed off to a big shoot at Global X in the afternoon, with a bunch of fun new videos coming out of it soon. Meanwhile, I filmed and edited this week’s AI Under the Hood, which is when the technology decided it did not love me back. More on that in Losses. Somewhere in there, a long call with my sister about our childhood. The good kind of long call.

Tuesday. Skin appointment first thing. Gotta keep this face camera ready. Picked up healthy breakfast bowls for the girls and delivered a reminder to clean their rooms. The clothes piles were becoming their own characters in our home. Then an ortho consult for our youngest, two work calls (the Globe and Mail, and a new accountant, which sounds boring but is actually thrilling because it means I won’t be doing a lot of it anymore), and a contractor came by to look at adding a shower. Our current layout could use some work.

Wednesday. Kickboxing, a YouTube meeting, and our weekly asset handover to BNN Bloomberg. If you’re new here, BNN Bloomberg is our partner, and every week we hand over our videos and articles to run on their digital properties.

Thursday. A call with our agent, and the Ritholtz episode dropped at 4.

Friday. A catch up call with our lead sponsor, Global X. Organizing, errands, and getting ahead on next week. Hence the scheduled newsletter.

Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM

Jon’s AM: markets open, headlines, an Eric Jackson shoot, and straight to Global X for the afternoon.

Caroline’s PM: hosting, editing, troubleshooting, and keeping this whole operation moving.

The Wins This Week

Co-hosting the Eric Jackson shoot, a Barry Ritholtz episode I’m genuinely proud of, a new accountant, and a scheduled newsletter that proves I can, in fact, plan ahead.

The Losses This Week

Monday was not my day, technologically speaking. First the SanDisk card in the Sony glitched out and had to be reformatted, after triple checking nothing was lost. Then CapCut ate my AI Under the Hood project. A GPU graphics glitch, apparently. Two hours of troubleshooting later, the project reappeared like nothing happened. Everything was recovered. My blood pressure has not commented.

The takeaway

Back up your work. Then back it up again. The two hours you spend troubleshooting are always the two hours you didn’t have.

P.S. Jon’s Substack is where the market analysis lives. Subscribe here.

This was one of those weeks where the calendar looked normal on Monday and then somehow contained a national holiday, a belated Father’s Day, an early birthday party, and a Dollarama slime operation. Reader, we contain multitudes.

Also, I got my highlights done for the first time in four months. If you’ve ever built a content business out of your house, you know exactly how a person goes four months without a hair appointment. It happens one “I’ll book it next week” at a time.

This week on Ticker Take: 8 Quality Stocks Cheap Right Now

Thursday we released our conversation with Lorne Steinberg, and the title says it all: “8 Quality Stocks Cheap Right Now.”

Lorne is a true value investor, which means he spends his time hunting for great businesses the market has temporarily fallen out of love with. It’s a wonderful counterweight to a market that mostly wants to talk about AI every single day. Quality plus patience plus a good price. It sounds simple. It is not easy.

If you like the part of investing where you actually get a list of names to go research, this one’s for you.

AI Under the Hood: Agentjacking

Monday’s AI Under the Hood went somewhere a little darker: “Agentjacking.”

It’s a term coined by Tenet, a startup focused on exactly this problem. Here’s the short version. As companies deploy AI agents to do real work, attackers are learning to hijack those same agents and turn them into the threat. Which means cybersecurity, already a massive industry, is getting a whole new layer.

Beyond Tenet, I talked about the established security players positioned for the moment, names like Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, and Zscaler. When the robots start hijacking the robots, somebody has to play defense, and investors have noticed.

The Week

Monday. Kickboxing for me in the morning, then Jon did a Zoom interview with an upcoming guest while I turned the house back into a studio. We recorded tops and tails in Studio 3 for upcoming episodes. (Studio 3 is a corner of our house. All of our studios are corners of our house.) AI Under the Hood went out.

Tuesday. Highlights, finally.

Then edits, and then a trip to Dollarama with the girls to stock up on slime supplies. Nothing keeps teenagers busy like a chemistry experiment you can buy for six dollars.

Wednesday. Canada Day. Kickboxing in the morning, then a belated Father’s Day lunch at Joeys with my sister and my dad.

Then a casual family dinner out and fireworks at the beach. Fun fact: we’re American citizens too, but we’ve been back in Canada for ten years now, and watching fireworks over the water in our own neighbourhood never gets old.

Thursday. The Lorne Steinberg episode went live. Jon went on the JD Durkin show at the NYSE, beamed in over Zoom from the house, meetings with partners, and one daughter got a haircut. A full-spectrum day.

Friday. Kickboxing, then a day of the invisible work: calls, partner strategy, event prep, and planning sessions for where this whole thing goes next. More on that below.

Saturday. My family threw me an early birthday celebration, complete with karaoke.

Dinner at Casa Madera

Karaoke at Bar+

My actual birthday is July 14, but we’ll be away, so we moved the party up. I regret nothing about my song choices. We sang hits from icons like Roxette, Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Natasha Bedingfield, to name a few. Oh, and my bro-in-law started the night off with “Sweet Caroline!” And we ended it with The Greatest Showman. Jon sang a bunch and took it home with “Unwritten.” My nephews sang “Rein Me In” and we played it on the way home and the entire next day. Such an amazing song!

Sunday. Grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning, walk the dog, set up for our Monday shoot, and try to chill. Even the content machine folds towels.

The business behind the business

Here’s a part of the job that never shows up on camera: this week had a lot of strategy in it.

Between the recordings and the releases, we were deep in partner conversations, event prep, work on an ad campaign, and the bigger-picture planning that a media company actually runs on. When it’s just the two of you, there’s no strategy department down the hall. The strategy department is us, at the kitchen table, usually with cold coffee.

What we keep coming back to is this: the content is the engine, but the partnerships, the events, and the long-term bets are the steering wheel. You can’t just make videos and hope. You have to keep asking where the whole thing is headed, which brands and platforms you want beside you for the ride, and what you’re building toward two years out, not two weeks out.

And speaking of building toward something: the big project we’ve hinted at before is still very much in the works. Progress this week, real progress. I still can’t tell you what it is. But when I can, you’ll hear it here first, and I promise the wait will make sense.

Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM

Jon’s mornings this week: guest interviews, the JD Durkin hit, partner meetings, market prep.

My evenings: editing, thumbnails, slime logistics, birthday party planning, and mentally packing for the trips ahead.

Somewhere in the middle, we run a company. And apparently also a strategy department.

The Wins This Week

• The Lorne Steinberg episode is live. A proper value investing masterclass with actual stock names attached.

• Jon on the JD Durkin show at the NYSE. Over Zoom this time, which means he made it to the Exchange without leaving the kitchen. Efficiency.

• Real momentum on the big project. Still classified. Still exciting.

• Highlights after four months. A win for me, my mirror, and every thumbnail I appear in going forward.

• Early birthday karaoke. Family, cake, and a microphone.

The Losses This Week

• Four months, though. Let’s not gloss over that. Four months between hair appointments is not a schedule, it’s a cry for help.

• The slime is everywhere now. We made it to keep the girls busy. It worked. It is also on things.

• A holiday week is still a work week. Canada Day fell on a Wednesday, and the videos do not know it’s a holiday.

The takeaway

Lorne’s whole philosophy is that quality plus patience wins. You find something good, you commit, and you let time do the heavy lifting.

I’d like to formally submit that this also describes marriage, parenting, kickboxing, and building a media company out of your house. This week had a national holiday, a birthday party, a Father’s Day lunch, several videos out the door, and a whole layer of strategy work nobody will ever see on YouTube. None of it was dramatic. All of it compounds.

Quality, patience, and showing up. That’s the portfolio.

See you next week.

Caroline

P.S. If you haven’t subscribed to Jon’s Substack for the actual market takes, do that too. You’ll get both sides of our brain.

Reader, this was the week the vault finally opened. For a week, we’d been sitting on footage we couldn’t show anyone, from a chip lab we could barely admit we’d been inside. This week it all went live. We were the only Canadian outlet that got in, and now you can see why that mattered so much to us.

It was also the last week of school. So we published a 60 Minutes-style deep dive on stealth AI hardware in between driving an hour each way to drop a daughter at camp counsellor training, and co-signing the girls up to babysit a neighbour’s cat. One minute you’re explaining custom silicon. The next you’re confirming the cat eats twice a day.

This week on Ticker Take

Monday we dropped the big one. Our 60 Minutes-style behind-the-scenes video from inside the stealth AI chip lab we visited in Austin. This is the one we couldn’t talk about for a week. The access was rare, the build was a beast, and watching it finally go out into the world after all that secrecy felt like exhaling.

Thursday brought the companion piece: our full Ticker Take episode on Amazon and what all of this actually means for the stock. The lab film is the story. The Thursday episode is the so-what for your portfolio. Two very different videos from the same trip, and I’m proud of both.

AI Under the Hood

Tuesday’s short went under the hood on Trainium, Amazon’s own AI chip and the entire reason we were standing in that lab in the first place. If the long-form is the dinner, this is the amuse-bouche. Sixty seconds on why a company best known for shipping you paper towels decided to go build its own silicon.

The week, more or less

The studio doubleheader. Monday we recorded two upcoming episodes back-to-back in the studio. Different setups, different scripts, one very patient teleprompter (operated, as always, by me).

The IonQ interview. Jon sat down with the team at IonQ for a piece on quantum computing that’s coming your way soon. I won’t spoil it. I’ll just say I now know far more about qubits than I ever planned to.

The big thing I can’t talk about yet. There’s a large project in the works behind the scenes that I’m not ready to share. Consider this a deliberate tease.

The commute. Camp counsellor training ran all week, an hour each way, every single day, with a history exam stacked on top.

The end of an era. Quinn closed out grade eight with a boat cruise and what I can only describe as a sleepover tour. Three nights at her friend’s place. I believe she came home for laundry and a wave.

The cat. The girls signed on to babysit a neighbour’s cat. We are now a cat household. On a contract basis.

Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM

Jon’s AM: Interview prep for IonQ, the Amazon stock episode, and an event he hosted at a badminton club with university students for Barometer Capital.

Caroline’s PM: Editing, publishing, the daily camp run, cat onboarding, and one glorious hour at a moms-only pool party on the final day of school. One hour. Wedged between two work blocks. I have never in my life appreciated a pool more.

The Wins

The vault opened. The full Amazon package went live, lab film and all, after a week under wraps.

Only Canadian outlet. Still the only Canadian media that got inside that lab. I am never going to get tired of saying that.

One hour of pool. Sometimes the win is just sixty minutes of being a person and not a production company.

Kickboxing held. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, no exceptions. The one thing on my calendar that does not move for anybody.

The Losses

Sleep. The week’s first casualty. Between the camp commute, studio days, production edits, calls, and a daughter on a three-night sleepover circuit, I ran on fumes and reheated coffee.

My step count on studio days. You’d think a full day of filming would register as exercise. It does not.

Why I’m telling you this

Here’s what this week reminded me, Reader. The work that looks the most impressive from the outside, the stealth lab, the rare access, the 60 Minutes style film, lives in the exact same calendar as the camp drop-offs and the cat contract and the one stolen hour at a pool party. There is no separate track for the big stuff. It all happens in the same week, in the same house, by the same two people running on the same lack of sleep.

People ask how a husband and wife build a media company out of a home studio while raising two teenagers. The honest answer is that we don’t separate the lab from the laundry. We just keep both moving and try very hard not to drop either. This week we didn’t drop either.

Now we’re heading into a low-key weekend, which in this house means roughly four loads of laundry and pretending we won’t open the laptops. Thanks for being here. See you next week.

— Caroline

P.S. For the actual market takes, the numbers, the stock calls, subscribe to Jon’s Substack too. Two sides of the same overworked brain.

Hi, it’s Caroline.

She graduated.

My baby. The one who, by every metric available to me, was born approximately eight minutes ago, walked across a stage on Monday in a beautiful dress (one of the ninja-shopped backups, in case you remember the saga), her hair done by the master stylist, her newly buttery-blonde waves catching the light just so, and she officially closed out Grade 8.

I am not crying. You’re crying.

Oh, and one more thing: our long-form Amazon video from inside Annapurna Labs dropped this morning at 8 AM.

Big drop: Inside Amazon’s secret AI chip lab, live this morning

Major news in this issue: our long-form Amazon video from inside Annapurna Labs dropped this morning at 8 AM. Inside the Secret AI Chip Lab. The video you’ve been hearing me build up to for weeks. The chips, the architecture, the people, the room.

This is the first of the long-form videos coming out of Austin, and we spent this week deep in the edit chair finishing it and the next one. Coming up this Thursday on Ticker Take: We Got Inside Amazon, Here’s What It Means for the Stock. Plus, an AI Under the Hood episode from the trip dropping tomorrow. Stay tuned, the Amazon content is just getting started.

Monday: a graduate

Monday morning began at the salon. Quinn had been using a bleaching spray she’d been quietly experimenting with, and reader, the result was gorgeous: buttery blonde waves that I genuinely could not stop staring at. The master stylist worked her magic, the look came together, and by the time we got home, balloons were being delivered to the front door, and the whole house was officially in graduation mode.

We squeezed in a guest shoot at the home studio in the middle of all of it, because the content machine does not pause for milestones, but somehow the day stayed sacred anyway. By afternoon, we were at the ceremony.

I watched her walk across that stage and felt that very specific thing that all moms eventually feel: the squeeze in your chest that contains all the versions of her you’ve ever known. The toddler. The first day of kindergarten. The Hollister sale on the kitchen bar. And now, the girl about to start Grade 9.

She did it. She really did it. And she did it looking radiant.

To Quinn: I am so unbelievably proud of you. You are kind, you are funny, you are smart, you are gorgeous, you are a trendsetter, and the world is so lucky it gets to keep meeting you.

The video this week: 5 Golden Growth Stocks to Buy on the Stumble, with Chris Stuchberry

This week’s Ticker Take dropped Thursday at 4 PM: a sit-down with Chris Stuchberry, breaking down 5 Golden Growth Stocks to Buy on the Stumble. The kind of episode that helps you sharpen your watchlist when the market gives you an opening.

As always, this is not financial advice. Just a smart conversation worth your time.

AI Under the Hood: memory and the AMD acquisition of MEXT

This week’s AI Under the Hood is about the corner of the AI race nobody is paying enough attention to: memory.

Specifically, the story of AMD acquiring MEXT, and why the move matters more than the headline suggests. Memory is one of the most overlooked constraints in the AI build-out, and AMD positioning itself in that part of the stack tells you a lot about where the chip race is actually going.

Subscribe to my Instagram, TikTok, or the Ticker Take YouTube channel so you don’t miss it.

The rest of the week

Tuesday: I genuinely cannot tell you what I did. I know I worked. The kind of day that goes by entirely in production blur. The machine does not stop, even when your brain has politely asked it to.

Wednesday: under the weather. A wave of fatigue, a stuffed-up head, and some pain returning to my eye where I had shingles two years ago. I took steroid drops for a year back then, and I’m not interested in tempting fate, so I listened to my body and skipped kickboxing for the first time in a while. Worked through it, rested when I could, did not push.

Wednesday night: Cali’s softball semifinal. I missed her games the previous week (Austin, then the SpaceX launch), so I was so excited to drive Cali and her friends out and stand on the sidelines. I then stood in the rain for two hours. They almost won. They lost 10-9, after a final at-bat from a kid who genuinely did not want to swing. His mom and I were standing nearby, and she said with a great laugh, “he won’t do it.” I said something hopeful about big turn-around moments. She knew her son. He did not swing. I respect them both.

Thursday: work, calls, and the video drop.

Friday: kickboxing cancelled, dentist scheduled. My kickboxing coach had his sister’s graduation (a whole graduation theme to this week, apparently), so I took the rare daytime opening and booked Cali and Quinn in for the dentist. Our schedules had pushed it so far that the next available opening was October, so when a Friday slot appeared, we took it. Calls, meetings, and a quiet Friday night playing Heads Up on the porch with Cali and Jon. Quinn was at a sleepover. The porch, the laughs, and one of my daughters all to myself.

Saturday: a long walk with Cali and Lola. We took the long route. Talked about everything and nothing. Then I sat down to write Jon a Father’s Day card and pick out his gift. The card is the part that always takes the longes, but the sentiments are worth it.

Sunday: the back porch, and three hours that disappeared

Sunday started early, because I drove Cali to her camp counselor training, which, as a sentence I am writing, also makes me emotional. She is going to be incredible at it.

Then I brought breakfast over to my parents' house for Father's Day. We sat on the back porch of the house I grew up in from age 11, my mom and dad and me, and stayed there for what I thought was an hour.

It was three.

Three hours that disappeared the way only certain mornings can. The kind where the conversation flows, the sun moves across the porch, and you don’t notice time at all. Just calm. Just family. Just the back porch of the house I grew up in. Time flies when you’re having fun is a phrase I have said a thousand times in my life, but I felt it on Sunday in a way I won’t forget for a while.

I came home and made Jon a Father’s Day dinner with the girls: strip loin, mushrooms, brussel sprouts, salad and a Barolo. The kind of dinner that says everything I’d want a card to say, and then some.

Happy Father’s Day to one of the best dads I know, and a Happy Father’s Day to my dad and father-in-law, too.

Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM

Jon this week: filming, writing, his columns, the Stuchberry interview, the back-end of the SpaceX cycle, prepping more content from Austin, and being the dad-of-the-house on Father’s Day. The man does not stop.

Me this week: Quinn’s graduation, the guest shoot squeezed in around it, the AI Under the Hood on AMD/MEXT, the under-the-weather rest day, the rain-soaked semifinal, the Heads Up porch night, the long walk, the Sunday on the porch with my parents, and a strip loin dinner that came together with three sets of female hands.

The Wins This Week

• Quinn graduated Grade 8. Buttery blonde waves, beautiful dress, radiant kid.

• Amazon video #1, live this morning. Inside the Secret AI Chip Lab. The Austin trip officially has receipts.

• Coming Thursday: We Got Inside Amazon, Here’s What It Means for the Stock. The investor side of the trip is next.

• New video live: 5 Golden Growth Stocks to Buy on the Stumble with Chris Stuchberry. Search Ticker Take with Jon Erlichman on YouTube.

• New AI Under the Hood: the AMD/MEXT memory story. Watch it.

• Cali, camp counselor in training. I am so proud I can barely talk about it.

• A Heads Up night on the porch with Cali. A quiet treasure.

• Three hours on my parents’ back porch. Time disappeared.

• A strip loin and Barolo Father’s Day dinner. Made with the girls. Worth every minute.

• Listening to my body, instead of overriding it. Underrated win.

• A rare daytime dentist slot, claimed. October was the alternative. I will take it.

The Losses This Week

• The shingles eye, briefly back. Listening. Resting. Not pushing.

• Cali’s softball semifinal, in the rain, 10-9. The good fight, fought.

• Sleep: Slow, steady, and not always cooperating.

• Tuesday: A black hole.

The takeaway

Some weeks the headlines are loud. This week, the loudest thing in my life was a 13-year-old in a graduation dress, walking across a stage that closed out one chapter of her life and started another.

Quinn graduating reminded me, again, that the work matters less than the moments. The content cycle will be here tomorrow. The video drops will keep coming. The AI Under the Hoods will keep filming. But Monday afternoon, with her hair done, the balloons at the door, and her smile bigger than I’d ever seen, was a moment I will carry forever.

Add to that: a Wednesday I rested. A Friday night Heads Up game. A long walk with the dog. Three hours that disappeared on a porch I have known since I was 11. A Sunday dinner cooked with my daughters for the dad who has shown up for all of it.

This was a quieter week, in the very best way.

Onwards.

Thanks for being here. See you next week.

Caroline

P.S. Subscribe to Jon’s Substack if you haven’t, you’ll get both sides of our brain.

Hi, it’s Caroline.

We made it back from Austin late Thursday night, 11:30 PM, after a delayed flight (more on that, briefly, below), and I am still processing the week. It was one of those weeks. The kind where you look up and realize you’ve been part of something bigger than your usual content calendar can hold.

Settle in.

Tuesday: Austin landing, comedy standby, BBQ redemption

We flew down Tuesday morning, an Air Canada delay added a casual two hours to our trip, which I used to sleep in the lounge after a rough night the night before. We arrived to 33-degree Austin heat, dropped our bags, and went straight to work, filming all afternoon for our two long-form Amazon videos, shorts, promos, AI Under the Hood, the works. Productive day one.

Then we decided to go get dinner. Earlier in the day I’d randomly asked Jon where Joe Rogan lives now. He said Austin, and that his comedy club, Comedy Mothership, was right here in town. We looked it up. It was a block from our hotel. Tickets were sold out, of course, but we walked over and put our names on the standby list. I distinctly remember two guys walking up right before us. One with a very cool moustache.

The standby line led us into the iconic Mitzi’s Bar, named after Mitzi Shore, considered the godmother of stand-up comedy. (After a quick bag check for guns, which is a Texas welcome I will not forget.) We ordered a margarita and waited. A half hour later, a woman came out and called six names off the standby list. We were the only two left who didn’t make it in. The moustache couple, of course, did.

Balloon deflated, we pivoted to the only acceptable Texas-trip pivot: BBQ. We went to Cooper’s and had brisket, turkey, corn, coleslaw, and the most tangy, perfect pickles I’ve maybe ever had.

We also stopped by the iconic Antone's, the Austin blues club that has hosted just about every great Texas musician you've ever heard of, and picked up harmonicas for the girls. A small Austin music education, packaged in tin.

Then back to our hotel’s beautiful rooftop patio, with the downtown Austin skyline lit up, fire torches burning, a breeze cutting through the 33-degree night. Exactly the kind of moment that makes you stop trying so hard.

A massive thank you, Lola and the girls edition

While we were down in Austin filming, Jon’s parents came to our house and held down the fort with Lola and both girls. The kind of help that lets you fly across a border and shoot inside a stealth AI lab without your nervous system unravelling. Hot meals, school runs, dog walks, the works. The trip absolutely does not happen without them. We are so grateful, and Lola, by the way, gave them the full Lola welcome: many licks, many kisses, and an aggressive amount of joy that she gets to spend extra time with her grandparents.

Wednesday: inside Amazon’s secretive Annapurna Labs

Wednesday was the day. The reason we flew down. The reason this whole trip existed.

We were invited inside Amazon’s Annapurna Labs in Austin, the highly secretive AI chip lab where Amazon designs the world’s leading AI chips, the ones quietly running services like Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI (ChatGPT), and so many of the AI tools the rest of the world is using every day without ever knowing where the silicon actually comes from. This is a true stealth lab. Only a select handful of journalists and visitors ever get inside.

We were the only Canadian media outlet ever invited in. Ever.

I’ll let that sit for a second. It is still sinking in.

The day was structured around a presentation to a small group of international reporters, journalists from Australia, Chile, Spain, Mexico, and Japan. Smart, curious, well-rounded company to be in. The kind of room where you arrive and immediately feel like you’re standing exactly where you’re supposed to be.

Two of the people who made the day unforgettable:

Kristopher King, Amazon’s AI Chip Lab Director, who walked us through the lab itself. He showed us all the chips, gave us the full tour, and answered questions with the kind of warmth and openness that you really don’t expect from someone running one of the most quietly powerful operations in the AI economy.

Ron Diamant, distinguished engineer and head architect at Amazon, who designs the very chips powering Claude, ChatGPT, and the broader AI ecosystem.

During Kris’s presentation, he walked us through a slide with voltage dots along the bottom, and I asked a question about how they work, how the system around them is automated, and what happens when something goes wrong. Kris started to answer, and then Ron jumped in to help unpack the deeper engineering side. In the middle of the exchange, Ron paused, repeated my name out loud, “Caroline,” and said it was a “phenomenal” question, and that he had never heard a journalist ask one that good.

A beat later, the CNN Chile reporter in the room picked up the thread, referenced my question, and built on it with a follow-up of his own. To be the journalist whose question other journalists in the room reference and build off of? That was the moment of the trip. Watching a question I’d been chewing on become the launchpad for a deeper conversation in front of the head architect of the chips powering generative AI was, frankly, the kind of professional high I am going to be sitting with for a long time.

Reader, I am still recovering. I am also putting all of it on a shirt. (Joking. Mostly.)

It is one of those moments that you can’t quite plan for. You spend years building. You learn. You read. You read more. You ask better questions, slowly, over time. And then one day, in a stealth lab in Austin, the head architect of the chips powering most of generative AI says your name out loud and tells the room he’s never heard a journalist ask a question that good, and the room takes it and runs with it. I’ll hold onto that one.

Seeing the chips up close, touching them, was its own moment. These tiny pieces of silicon are powering the entire AI economy. They are the brain stem of the moment we are all living through. Standing in the room where they are designed, watching the people who design them work, is an experience I’m still catching up to mentally.

I was also extremely grateful for my kickboxing and weight training all year, because operating the gimbal for the long follow-shots inside the lab was a workout. Strength came in handy. I also set up two beautiful sit-down interviews with Jon and Ron and Jon and Kris, and I leaned hard into my old photography life, the composition, the light, the angles, the kind of shot that elevates an interview from “talking head” to “this is a moment.” That part of the day was a quiet personal joy.

It was, simultaneously, fascinating, informative, fun, special, and exhausting. We had a couple of hours to regroup at the hotel before dinner, but the work did not stop. More promos for our regular Thursday video drop, plus organizing the day’s Amazon footage on the laptop so the edit pipeline could start.

Wednesday night: ghosts, fried green tomatoes, and the Knicks comeback

We were invited that evening to Moonshine Patio Bar & Grill at 303 Red River Street, a restaurant housed in Austin’s historic 1854 Waterloo Compound, one of the oldest limestone buildings in the city and a listed site on the National Register of Historic Places. Cozy, beautiful, full of personality. The fried green tomatoes did not disappoint.

After dinner we walked to 5th Street and stopped at Friends, a local bar with live music. The Austin music scene is its own thing, and sipping an Aperol spritz on a hot Austin night with a band playing in the corner is a memory I’ll keep. Then we headed back to our hotel bar, which was packed for the Knicks game.

Jon walked in and said “what happened?!” In the ten minutes we’d been away, the Knicks had pulled ahead by 29 points. We made one stop on the way for popcorn, Gatorade, and (because apparently this is now a thing I do) an adorable little copper Austin shot glass for my growing shot glass collection. (I do not drink shots. I collect shot glasses. Don’t ask me to explain.) Somewhere in the middle of all of that, I also picked up a small but significant gift for my dad: a Texas belt buckle.

In the lobby bar, a delightfully jovial guy filled us in on every single play we’d missed. We were instantly in. Suddenly we were part of the room watching the Knicks lock in the winning point, complete strangers high-fiving, the whole moment. We went upstairs feeling like we’d accidentally crashed exactly the right night out.

Thursday: SpaceX in motion, and an Austin send-off

Thursday was another full shoot day. The SpaceX IPO was happening Friday, so we filmed all around Austin, on location, for a special Ticker Take episode on space and the SpaceX IPO. We took a robo-taxi to one of the locations (the future is here, and it drives itself), and the day ended with us at the airport, exhausted but glowing.

The flight, of course, was delayed. Apparently while crews were changing out the air system on the plane, a passenger’s hat got caught in it. The result: we deplaned and waited. Honestly, of all the reasons for a delay, “a hat” is at least a memorable one. The silver lining: with extra time to kill in the terminal, I found a pair of horseshoe earrings for the girls. The hat delivered.

We made it home by 11:30 PM Thursday night. I unpacked, showered, regrouped, edited (which I’d already started in the airport), built thumbnails, and somehow it was 2 AM. Friday morning I made it to my kickboxing class, then back into the editing chair, taxes, accounting, the long-abandoned email inbox, strategy planning, everything.

The Thursday video: 8 Great Stocks That Have Nothing to Do with AI, with Adam Parker

This week’s Ticker Take dropped Thursday: a sit-down with Adam Parker, breaking down 8 great stocks that have nothing to do with AI. Because as much as we love covering the AI story (and we do, clearly), there are entire corners of the market doing serious, quiet work that the headlines aren’t catching.

Adam walks through his picks and the thinking behind each one. The kind of episode that broadens your lens.

As always, this is not financial advice. Just a smart conversation worth your time. Watch it.

The Friday video: SpaceX, the IPO, and the new space economy

And on Friday, our Ticker Take special on SpaceX and the IPO dropped. We filmed on location across Austin all week to bring this one together, and I’m genuinely proud of how it came out. If you’ve been watching the space economy heat up but weren’t sure what to make of the SpaceX listing, this episode is the one.

Friday night: ice cream, and an old friend

Cali had a softball game Friday night, but with the launch of our SpaceX video and all the promotion that comes with it, we did not make it to the field. I took my other daughter for ice cream down the street at Ed’s Real Scoop (a Beaches institution) instead.

And then, because the universe does this sometimes, we ran into Marcello, an old friend I had not seen in years, in front of the Fox Theatre.

Marcello is one of those friends whose presence in your life turns out, in retrospect, to have rearranged it. When I was living in New York, he introduced me to the casting director for Sex and the City, who introduced me to her friend Jinsey, who I ended up working with as a photographer for years (and who became one of my dearest friends). Jinsey also helped me get connected with my talent agency in New York, Innovative, where I worked for years doing voice work, including a long contract as the voice of Yoplait.

Marcello also starred in a Toronto production of This Is Our Youth, the play that had been a hit in London’s East End with Matt Damon. The Toronto run was produced by Woody Harrelson.

The kind of old friend you don’t see for years and then bump into in front of The Fox movie theater on a Friday night. Austin, Annapurna, Ed’s. Life is non-linear.

AI Under the Hood: Apple’s Google rent, and more Amazon content coming

This week’s AI Under the Hood dropped Tuesday, and it’s a juicy one: Apple is paying rent to Google.

Yes, that Apple. The story is that Apple’s AI, including the brain behind Siri, is now running on Google’s machines. Which means Apple, one of the most resource-rich companies on the planet, is effectively paying Google rent to power its own AI.

It’s the kind of behind-the-scenes story that says everything about where the AI infrastructure race actually stands right now. Watch it.

And looking ahead: the Annapurna footage is being edited as I type this. An AI Under the Hood episode is coming out of the trip, plus our two long-form Amazon videos and another short. The chips, the architecture, the people, the lab. Subscribe to my Instagram, TikTok, or the Ticker Take YouTube channel so you don’t miss it.

Weekend: mom’s 78th, a sister-in-law from Nairobi, and graduation eve

Wednesday was also my mom’s 78th birthday. So in between balancing the gimbal in the lab, doing my makeup, perfecting a slicked-back ponytail, and prepping camera gear, I also made my mom a custom AI-generated Vogue cover of her looking absolutely glam for her birthday. It is officially my new favourite thing to do for the people I love.

We took my mom out to Scaramouche for a beautiful dinner on Saturday to celebrate her birthday properly.

Sunday: Quinn got her nails done for her Grade 8 graduation. A beautiful set of tips with chrome white on white polka dots. And then we headed to Jon’s parents’ house for our niece Cecie‘s birthday party. Her parents are in town from Nairobi, where they currently live, so it was a rare treat to have everyone together.

And Monday: Quinn’s Grade 8 graduation. A hair appointment in the morning, filming squeezed in around it, and then we will have a graduate. I cannot believe I am writing that sentence. I’ll have more on that in the next issue, but I am already weepy and the day hasn’t even started.

Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM

Jon this week: Annapurna shoot day, SpaceX on-location shoots, two sit-down interviews, his weekly columns and shoots, a delayed flight and a hat saga, and the constant work of being the on-camera face of all of this. The man does not stop.

Me this week: the gimbal in the lab (with strength training to thank), the photography leaning in, on camera too, the Vogue card for mom, the editing-at-the-airport, the 2 AM thumbnails, the kickboxing class on no sleep, the SpaceX edit, mom’s birthday dinner, Quinn’s grad prep. The 11 PM brain was permanently online and so was the 2 AM brain.

The Wins This Week

• Inside Amazon’s Annapurna Labs. Only Canadian outlet ever invited. Still processing.

• Ron Diamant called my question “phenomenal.” Putting it on a shirt.

• The CNN Chile reporter built on my question. The room ran with it.

• Two great sit-down interviews. Jon with Ron, Jon with Kris. The footage is unreal.

• New Thursday video: 8 Great Stocks That Have Nothing to Do with AI with Adam Parker. Watch it.

• The SpaceX video, live. Watch it.

• Annapurna content coming. Stay tuned.

• My mom’s 78th birthday. Vogue card delivered. Dinner at Scaramouche.

• A Texas belt buckle for Dad. Extremely on-brand. Cannot wait to hand it over.

• Jon’s parents holding down the fort. Tuesday through Thursday, Lola and the girls covered.

• Antone’s harmonicas for the girls. A small piece of Austin music history, in tin.

• Horseshoe earrings, found during the hat delay. The detour delivered.

• An old friend at Ed’s. The kind of run-in that reminds you how connected everything is.

• Cecie’s birthday party. Family from Nairobi, everyone in one room.

• Quinn graduates Monday. Still processing.

The Losses This Week

• Sleep: Catastrophic. The Austin trip ate it.

• The Comedy Mothership standby list: We did not make the cut. Mitzi’s, however, knew us by the end.

• The hat that delayed our flight: Sir, what.

• Cali's softball game: Missed, in service of the SpaceX launch. Mom card not redeemed.

The takeaway

Some weeks you do the small things and they add up. Other weeks the universe puts you in a room you didn’t know existed, with the people designing the future, and asks you to keep up.

Annapurna was the bigger room. The kind of room you spend years quietly preparing for without realizing you’re preparing for it. Every kickboxing class, every Premiere edit at midnight, every thumbnail at 2 AM, every guest you sat across from on the Ticker Take set, all of it was practice for the day you’d stand in a stealth lab in Austin and ask a question worth being called “phenomenal.”

The Joe Rogan standby line. The BBQ pivot. The Knicks game in the lobby bar. The shot glass for the collection. The belt buckle for Dad. The 1854 limestone. The 33-degree breeze. Those were the bonus track.

But Annapurna was the album.

I’ll be carrying this trip for a long time.

Bigger things still coming. Onwards.

Thanks for being here. See you next week, with a graduate.

Caroline

P.S. Subscribe to Jon’s Substack if you haven’t, you’ll get both sides of our brain.

Hi, it’s Caroline.

This week, I put on a long gown in soft, layered shades of pink, with sweeping tulle and ballo

on sleeves, drank champagne with my girlfriends, and watched the National Ballet of Canada perform something so beautiful I forgot, briefly, that I had a single email to answer.

I’m going to come back to that. But first, the week.

The video this week: 6 Small Stocks Most Investors Are Missing, with Jordan Zinberg

This week’s Ticker Take sits down with Jordan Zinberg to break down six small-cap stocks that most investors aren’t paying attention to, the kind of names that fly under the radar but quietly do a lot of heavy lifting in a portfolio.

If you’re tired of hearing about the same ten stocks on every finance feed, this is the episode for you.

As always, this is not financial advice. Just a smart conversation with someone who’s done the homework. Watch it here.

AI Under the Hood, twice over

It was a double-drop week on the AI Under the Hood side, because the AI news cycle would not let me pick just one.

Episode one: Anthropic files to go public. The maker of Claude is now officially marching toward an IPO, and the implications across the AI sector, finance, and the broader public markets are significant. I broke down what’s in the filing, what it tells us about Anthropic’s trajectory, and why this one matters. Watch it here.

Episode two: Nvidia comes for your laptop. Nvidia unveiled the RTX Spark, a new chip built specifically for PC laptops, which is a notable expansion beyond the data centre into the device on your lap. This is Nvidia making sure they’re not just the AI infrastructure story, but the AI device story too. Watch it here.

Two episodes, one week, both moving fast. Subscribe to my Instagram, TikTok, or the Ticker Take YouTube channel to catch AI Under the Hood every week. The AI story is not slowing down.

Tuesday: an evening of Reverie at the Four Seasons Centre

Now, back to Tuesday.

The National Ballet of Canada‘s annual Mad Hot Ballet gala this year had a theme I genuinely loved: Reverie. An evening of reverie, in fact, held at the Four Seasons Centre, with the ballet itself as the headline event of the night.

I wore a long gown in soft, layered shades of pink, with sweeping tulle and beautiful balloon sleeves, and, reader, I felt like a dream. There is something about putting on a long gown that you cannot replicate in athleisure, no matter how nice the athleisure. My posture changed. My energy changed. My entire vocabulary, frankly, became slightly more dramatic, which is what gowns will do to you.

I went with girlfriends. We laughed. We drank champagne. We ate cotton candy!

We talked about our kids, our partners, our work, and the small everyday things that women friendships hold so well. Then we went in and watched the ballet, which was, predictably and gloriously, transcendent. Live ballet has a way of making the rest of the world quiet down for an hour, and I left feeling refilled in a way that is genuinely hard to put into words.

A pink gown, champagne, girlfriends, and ballet. Not a bad Tuesday.

The rest of the week

Monday: kickboxing, writing, and Cali’s evening baseball game. A solid Monday. The bleacher seat is officially my second office.

Wednesday: kickboxing, then work, work, work, work. Editing, filming, writing, the AI Under the Hood production. The kind of day where you don’t really look up until dinner.

Wednesday also: a vaccine adventure. Cali had a missed vaccine to catch up on, and what followed was a small lesson in how the Canadian public health system actually works (or doesn’t). Turns out: Toronto Public Health doesn’t track your kids’ vaccines automatically, your doctor doesn’t either, and somehow it falls to you — the parent — to track everything and report any new vaccines back to Public Health yourself. A genuinely flawed system that nobody warns you about until you’re in it. I have a lot more to say on this and I will say it in a future piece. Stay tuned.

Thursday: thumbnails, uploads, edits, calls, calls, calls. And one BIG call about something upcoming that I am super excited about. Cannot say more yet. Soon.

Thursday also: video drop + Jon at the Bell Upfronts. Our YouTube video went live, and Jon was at the Bell Upfronts, which was a great room and a great showing.

Friday: kickboxing, a PA Day, and SO MANY CALLS. The kind of Friday that delivers everything at once. PA Day with my youngest at home meant the day had a slightly different shape than usual, which is its own small joy.

Friday night: nephew’s 19th birthday party at my sister’s. My nephew turned NINETEEN. Cocktails were served. Cocktails were had. He is, officially, a person who can legally drink, which is a sentence I cannot believe I am typing. Cali skipped her softball game to be there, which tells you exactly how much she loves her cousins. Cali also fit in her school music awards banquet that day too, because she is somehow doing it all.

Saturday afternoon: a grade 8 grad dress crisis, and a one-hour ninja mission. Quick backstory: we had ordered a dress for my youngest’s Grade 8 graduation weeks ago. It never arrived. The customer service “response” was a robotic email offering a refund, no shipping update, no apology, and absolutely no urgency, which is exactly what you want to read when your 13-year-old’s biggest milestone of the year is approaching at speed.

Which is how Saturday turned into an emergency dress-shopping sprint with exactly one hour of buffer between dropping Cali off for her play and being back in our seats to watch her perform it. Reader, we ninja-shopped. In and out, decisive, ruthless. We came home with two beautiful backup dresses, both of which the graduate-in-question genuinely loves. Crisis averted, motherhood unlocked a new level, and we made it to the play with time to spare.

Saturday evening: Cali’s Young People’s Theatre performance. We got to watch her perform her monologue. There are few things more proud-mom-collapsing than watching your kid hold a stage by themselves. She was so good.

Saturday night: dinner at an Italian spot we’d never tried. We capped the day with a dinner at an Italian restaurant we’d never been to before. I had the branzino, Jon had the short ribs.

A couple of notable moments:

The man at the table next to us recognized Jon, and on his way out gave him a small touch on the back and said “have a good night.” (Jon’s recognition radius continues to expand. I love seeing it happen in the wild.)

Meanwhile, on the other side of us, sitting right beside our girls, was a couple in the middle of what appeared to be a very bad night. She was crying. He was tense. They left before their mains arrived.

The girls, for their part, had the kind of pizza you cut with scissors and chocolate cake for dessert. Both were, by their reports, excellent.

Sunday: prepping for Austin. Bags out. Itinerary checked. The travel anticipation officially kicking in. Austin, here we come. More on that in the next issue.

Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM

Jon this week: filming, writing, the Bell Upfronts, a big call, his weekly columns and shoots, prepping for Austin. The man does not stop.

Me this week: kickboxing, a ballet gala, a PA Day with my youngest, AI Under the Hood produced twice, thumbnails, edits, calls, calls, calls, family time, Cali’s monologue, and the slow build of an Austin trip taking shape. The 11 PM brain was very much in attendance, but the gala helped.

The Wins This Week

• Mad Hot Ballet at the Four Seasons Centre. A pink gown, champagne, girlfriends, and the ballet. A genuinely dreamy night.

• New video live: 6 Small Stocks Most Investors Are Missing with Jordan Zinberg. Watch it.

• New AI Under the Hood: Anthropic files to go public. Watch it.

• New AI Under the Hood: Nvidia’s RTX Spark for your laptop. Watch it.

• A big call I cannot tell you about yet. Soon.

• A successful ninja dress mission. Two backup dresses in one hour. Mother of the year inquiries are now open.door

• Jon at the Bell Upfronts.

• Cali’s monologue at Young People’s Theatre. Proud-mom moment number 1,000 and counting.

• Cali’s music awards banquet. A great day for her.

• My nephew’s 19th birthday. Still processing the math.

• A PA Day with my youngest. A small joy in the middle of a packed week.

• Austin is officially in motion.

The Losses This Week

• The Canadian vaccine reporting system: A topic for another day, but: not great.

• Sleep: Still pending. Still tracked.

• My ability to comprehend that my nephew is 19: Failing.

The takeaway

This week reminded me how much the life part of this life matters. The ballet, the gown, the champagne, the laughter with friends, the monologue from my daughter, the cocktail in the hand of my nephew, who I swear was eight just last week.

The work was there. The big call happened. The videos dropped. The thumbnails got made. But the parts I’ll remember are the parts that don’t fit on a content calendar. The dressing up. The hugging girlfriends. Watching Cali become someone with her own voice on her own stage.

If you only take one thing from this issue: put on the gown. Take the night. Watch the ballet. Hug the friend. Let your daughter blow you away.

Next week: Austin. New city, new energy, new everything. Buckle up.

Thanks for being here. See you next week.

Caroline

P.S. Subscribe to Jon’s Substack if you haven’t; you’ll get both sides of our brain.

Hi, it’s Caroline.

Quick scene reset: Last week was the quiet one. This week was not.

Jon turned a year older, we rang the opening bell at the TMX, a brand new Global X ETF launched, we dropped two videos, did a community event, hosted a guest shoot, kept the kids fed, the dog groomed, and the laundry going. And we attempted a date night in a neighbourhood that has officially decided we are too old for it. (Joke’s on them, we are.)

Settle in.

Thursday: Jon’s birthday + the bell at the TMX

If you’ve been reading The Take Down for a while, you’ll remember that earlier this year I rang the closing bell at the NYSE during our partnership day. A few weeks ago, Jon and I were both down there to film and co-host our first-ever Ticker Take episode at the NYSE. The bells, somehow, keep finding us.

This week we got to ring another one, this time at home.

Thursday was Jon’s birthday, and we kicked it off by ringing the opening bell at the TMX to mark the launch of Global X’s new space ETF, ORBX. A new fund from a partner we love, a new ticker, and a real-deal celebratory morning at the Toronto Stock Exchange. There’s something genuinely surreal about standing on that floor knowing that an instrument from a brand we’ve worked with so closely is opening for trading right behind us.

A bell. A birthday. A new ETF. All in one morning.

Then back to work. (Of course, back to work.)

The video this week: 10 Stocks That Actually Make Money, with David Driscoll

At 4 PM on Thursday, our latest Ticker Take episode dropped: a sit-down with David Driscoll to break down the measure he uses to find companies that are great at making money. Earnings only tell you part of the story. David shares the same metric Warren Buffett swears by, and the 10 stocks that make his list.

As always, this is not financial advice. Just a smart conversation with someone who knows what to look for. Watch it here.

AI Under the Hood: IREN and the AI Infrastructure Race

This week’s AI Under the Hood is about a part of the AI story that does not get enough airtime: the infrastructure race. The picks and shovels behind every model launch and chatbot we hear about.

I dug into IREN and what’s happening across the broader race, with names like CoreWeave, Vertiv, and the hyperscalers moving fast to lock down the compute, the cooling, the land, and the power that make all of this possible. The story behind the story.

In plain English, as always. Watch it here.

The rest of the week

Monday: kickboxing + a great guest shoot at the home studio. Started the week on a high note. The guest brought ideas I’m still thinking about, and we got the kind of episode I cannot wait to share.

Tuesday: a walk with a friend. The kind of catch-up that resets your nervous system. Also: Lola got groomed, which was its own production.

Wednesday: a full day. Jon was on Your Morning (always nice to see him in a different studio for a change), kickboxing for me, tons of work, and two great events back-to-back that evening.

First, the Blossom Social mixer at Everyside Social Eatery + Taphouse (right beside the TMX), a smart patio full of catch-ups with people I love working with in this industry.

Then over to the Balmy Beach Club for Jon’s Q&A with Natalie Johnson, who’s running for City Councillor in Beaches-East York. Our friends & neighbours, Lori and Mike Van Soelen have been working on the campaign, and another friend/neighbour, Valerie Blackstock, did the step and repeat and the rest of the event signage through her company Prism Promo. It is a very particular kind of magic when half the people making an event happen live on your street. The whole night reminded me how lucky we are to live in a community that shows up for each other.

Thursday evening: Jon’s birthday dinner at Imigrante with our girls. We’ve been meaning to go back to this spot for a while, and it did not disappoint. A proper birthday with our four, which is genuinely Jon’s favourite kind of birthday.

Friday: kickboxing, in-studio shoot, How to Make a Killing, and Cali’s school play. The shoot was for an upcoming episode (more soon). We stayed in that night and watched How to Make a Killing. Cali was at her school play and came home full of stories. A perfect Friday.

Saturday: a date night, with a brief stop in the future of nightlife

Saturday was the grown-up part of Jon’s birthday weekend. Dinner at Alder, which was excellent, and then we decided to do a small Toronto Saturday-night walking tour.

First stop: Paris Texas. Now, we knew exactly what Paris Texas was, the cool kids’ bar, packed with the city’s twenty-somethings, the kind of place where the line is long, the music is loud, and nobody in the room has yet developed an opinion about back support. (Jon, incidentally, had thrown out his back earlier that same day. The universe has a sense of humour and was apparently leaning into the bit.) We weren't trying to belong there. We just wanted to walk through. Take the temperature. See what the youth are up to.

It was 8:30 PM. The place, naturally, was empty. Because Paris Texas, as anyone under thirty will tell you, does not get going until 11:30 at the absolute earliest. We had arrived three full hours before the demographic we were observing was even going to show up. We walked through a half-lit, low-energy room, were offered a table and politely declined. We stopped to take a couple of selfies and exited.

We then redirected to Beso by Patria for a drink, which was much more “two adults celebrating a birthday” energy, and headed home for cake with the girls. We watched Ladies First together, ate said cake, and called it a night well before the people at Paris Texas had even arrived.

I’m calling that a win. The girls were home, the cake was good, and Jon got to spend his birthday Saturday with the people who actually like him. Cake at home with your teenagers is, increasingly, my entire personality.

Sunday: laundry, gardening, and a summer being booked

Sunday was the kind of slow-and-productive day you don’t notice you needed until you’re in it.

Mountains of laundry. Gardening, weeding, the backyard, getting that mid-spring “okay, we are really in the season now” attention. A long walk with Lola down to the beach. And, in the afternoon, the slow joyful work of booking the summer: itinerary planning, trip dates, the early notes on what the next few months will look like.

Summer is officially being scheduled. More on that as it gets real.

Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM

Jon this week: Your Morning, the TMX bell, two video drops, a Q&A with a city councillor candidate, a birthday dinner with the family, a birthday weekend that ended in cake, and somewhere in there, his usual columns and shoots. The man does not stop. (Annual reminder: he turned a year older this week. He looks great.)

Me this week: Kickboxing three times, a walk with a friend, the TMX morning, the dinners, the date night that aged us, this Substack, Video shoots, drops, and the long, quiet Sunday at home. The 11 PM brain is getting more 10 PM company, which I take as growth.

The Wins This Week

• The bell at the TMX. A morning we’ll remember.

• ORBX is live. Global X’s new space ETF, in the world, trading.

• Jon’s birthday with our four. The best version.

• New video live: 10 Stocks That Actually Make Money, with David Driscoll. Watch it.

• New AI Under the Hood: IREN and the AI infrastructure race, featuring CoreWeave, Vertiv, and the hyperscalers. Watch it.

• Jon on Your Morning.

• The Blossom Social mixer at Everyside. A great room, full of people I like.

• The Natalie Johnson Q&A at Balmy Beach Club, with a whole team of neighbours making it happen.

• Alder for date night. A genuinely lovely dinner.

• Cali’s school play. She came home glowing.

• The summer, officially being scheduled.

The Losses This Week

• Paris Texas at 8:30 PM: Three hours too early, and probably twenty years too old. A learning experience.

• The mountain of laundry: It found me. As it always does.

• Sleep: Still a work in progress. Birthday weeks are not when sleep wins.

The takeaway

Some weeks, you ring a bell. Some weeks, you walk out of a bar because you’ve aged thirty years in twelve seconds. Some weeks you do both, on the same week, with the same husband, and you laugh about it in the cab on the way home.

This week had it all. The marquee morning at the TMX. The launch of a new ETF. A birthday with the people who matter most. A date night, an at-home cake night, a school play, a guest shoot, a Q&A, two videos, a friend’s walk, and Sunday’s slow exhale of laundry and gardening and a summer about to start.

If last week was the pause, this week was the proof that the pause works. The slower weeks let the busier ones land. They give you the energy to ring the bell, to walk out of the bar, to eat cake with your kids, and to mean every part of it.

Bell rung. Birthday celebrated. Onwards.

Thanks for being here. See you next week.

Caroline

P.S. A belated happy birthday to Jon if you didn’t get to wish him one this week. Subscribe to his Substack if you haven’t, you’ll get both sides of our brain.

After weeks of NYSE shoots and 4 AM emails and a skin tag saga that I’m still emotionally processing, this week was quiet. Not nothing happened quiet. Just slower. The kind of week where I could feel my shoulders drop a little.

I forget, sometimes, how much I need a slower week. The content machine doesn’t stop just because life slows down, but the feeling of life slowing down is its own small gift, and this week was one of them.

So this issue is a little softer. Less marquee, more pause. Let me walk you through it.

Reminder: Jon's birthday is this Thursday, May 28th. If you've been a Ticker Take viewer for any length of time, throw him a "happy birthday" online. He pretends he doesn't care. He absolutely cares.

Victoria Day, family as therapy

We spent Victoria Day evening at my parents’ house with my sister and her family. Somewhere between the food and the cousins running around, family time slipped quietly into therapy time, the kind that happens around a kitchen island, where the people who have known you the longest can hear what you’re really telling them, even when you don’t say it directly. I left feeling lighter than I arrived, which is the highest compliment I can give to a Monday night.

The video this week: Dan Ives and his 9 All-Star AI Stocks

This week’s Ticker Take is a great one: Dan Ives joined us to break down his 9 All-Star AI Stocks. Dan has been one of the most-watched voices in tech research for years, and his picks come with both conviction and reasoning. If you’ve been wondering where the smart money is looking in AI right now, this episode is the one to watch.

A home studio shoot, plus a lot of AI thinking

Tuesday was another home studio shoot with a fantastic guest and a topic I genuinely think is going to land when it drops. Cannot say more yet, but it’s coming.

We also spent a meaningful chunk of the week thinking about AI and agentic AI, specifically how we can use it inside our own business. Not just as a topic we cover, but as a tool that actually helps us produce, plan, and grow. It’s a fascinating moment because the technology is moving faster than most companies can adapt to it, and we want to be on the right side of that curve, not the late one. We also released a deep dive video on the AI Agents replacing Wall Street analysts.

On Friday, Jon went on MTS, the popular show on X, to talk tech, AI, and the broader media landscape. Worth a listen if you missed it.

AI Under the Hood: AI stocks are up 32%, and somehow still cheap

This week’s AI Under the Hood short is about a paradox that’s been bugging me, the fact that AI stocks have soared this year, and yet, on a P/E basis, they’re still historically reasonable. They’re trading at only about an 8% premium to the rest of the market, which, when you actually look at the long-term average, is cheap.

It’s a counterintuitive story, and the kind I love telling, because it forces you to look past the headline and check the math. I broke it down in plain English. Watch it here.

A small confession: my first facial in 20 years

This will sound dramatic, but it’s true: I had not had a facial in 20 years. Two decades. The reasons are layered. I am extremely particular about my skin, I use very specific products that keep it happy, and one bad facial in my mid-twenties scared me off the entire experience. (It also made me realize I’m slightly claustrophobic, which I had not been aware of until I was lying flat with a steam machine pointed at my face.)

So when a half-hour Wednesday lunch-break facial at Formula Fig appeared in a gift bag from a fellow Substacker, Sarah Bartnicka at , I had a choice to make. Go back into the chair after 20 years of avoidance, or politely re-gift it.

Reader, I went.

It was exactly what the doctor ordered. The 30-minute format was perfect, no claustrophobia, no overcommitment, just enough to wake up my skin without traumatizing my nervous system. I walked out with a Korean serum (vitamin C and niacinamide) and the strange, peaceful feeling of having done something nice for myself in the middle of a workday.

I will go back, which is something I genuinely never thought I would say.

The rest of the week

A manicure. Juicy jelly pink for spring, because the season called for something cheerful. A small break that felt like a big one.

Friday night softball. Another game in the bleachers, this one with a memorable cameo: our dog Lola decided to make her professional softball debut by running, smiling, straight into the middle of the field mid-game. Genuinely the funniest thing that happened to me all week. Cali was less amused. Lola was thrilled. The crowd was somewhere in between. It became the family story of the night.

Dress shopping, season of milestones edition. Two events coming up. The first is the National Ballet’s Mad Hot Ballet gala, the theme this year is Reverie, which I love. The second is my younger daughter’s Grade 8 graduation, which still does not feel real. We did her dress shopping together. (By "together," I mean I sent her loads of ideas, and she declined all of them.) She has excellent style and is a fashion icon, so we ended up with a beautiful little number.

Mom + producer mode, all week. I also helped Cali with her Com Tech class album cover project (one of those assignments that pulls you straight into the creative weeds in the best way) and ran her self-tape audition. And then, just yesterday, for an upcoming Ticker Take video, we threw cakes in Jon's face. Yes, plural cakes. Yes, on purpose. Yes, the bloopers are going to be incredible.

A Hollister night, with my teenage daughters. Friday night, the three of us huddled around my laptop at the kitchen bar, scrolling the Hollister sale together. Laughing at descriptions, debating tops, talking each other into and out of things. Fashion as the bridge. Shopping as the love language. If anyone has a teenage girl in their life, you know exactly what I’m talking about. These moments are golden, and I will take them in whatever form they come.

Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM

Jon this week: filming, writing, his MTS appearance, his weekly columns, his usual content factory. Same engine, same speed.

Me this week: Ticker Take taping, AI Under the Hood production, brand calls, the manicure, the facial, the dress shopping, this Substack, and a slightly slower pace. The 11 PM brain showed up but a few times it got to go to bed before midnight, and I am calling that a personal victory.

The Wins This Week

• A slightly slower week. Underrated. Recommended.

• Family-as-therapy at my parents’. The kitchen island, doing what kitchen islands do.

• New video live: Dan Ives and his 9 All-Star AI Stocks. Watch it.

• New AI Under the Hood: the AI stocks paradox. Watch it.

• Jon’s MTS appearance. Always great to see him in a different room.

• My first facial in 20 years. Korean serum acquired. Nervous system intact.

• A juicy jelly pink manicure. A small spring victory.

• My daughter, certified fashionista. Incredible grad dress found.

• Lola, athlete. A debut for the ages.

• A Hollister night with my girls. Bridge built via swipe.

The Losses This Week

• Sleep: Slightly better. I am cautiously, hesitantly, knock-on-wood pleased.

• Cali’s reaction to Lola’s softball cameo: Less than charitable.

• My patience for dress shopping (mine): Still pending. Reverie awaits.

The takeaway

Some weeks the lesson is about how much you can push. This week’s was about how much you can soften.

The facial after 20 years. The manicure. The unhurried conversation at my parents’ kitchen island. The kitchen bar with my teenagers, scrolling Hollister together. The dog who ran onto a softball field and reminded everyone that life is, fundamentally, kind of absurd.

The work was still there. The shoots still happened. The video still went up. But the week’s real shape was made by everything around the work, not the work itself.

Some weeks the gift is the milestone. Other weeks the gift is the pause. This week was the pause, and I’m not letting it pass without saying thank you to it.

Big things coming, as always. But also: pauses are allowed.

Thanks for being here. See you next week.

Caroline

P.S. Substack is up this week and worth a read. Subscribe if you haven’t, you’ll get both sides of our brain.
And don't forget to wish Jon a happy birthday this Thursday, May 28th. 😊

Last issue ended with Mother’s Day brunch, and somehow we are now a full week later and I genuinely have no idea where the time went. This week moved at a pace that I cannot recommend, but also cannot stop. So buckle up.

(Also, advance notice: Jon’s birthday is next Wednesday, May 28th. Mark it down. If you’ve been a Ticker Take viewer for any length of time, throw him a “happy birthday” online when the day comes. He pretends he doesn’t care. He absolutely cares.)

The video this week: 8 Stocks for a Bull or Bear Market

This week’s Ticker Take is the episode we filmed at the NYSE with Jay Hatfield, all about taking a barbell approach to investing, balancing low-beta and high-beta stocks to give yourself coverage in both directions of the market. 8 stocks for either a bull or a bear market. It’s the kind of episode I always learn from, and I think you will too.

(Yes, this is also the episode where we shot in Studio 2 with the NYSE floor right below us. Still doesn’t feel real.)

The Week

Monday: kickboxing, then a home studio shoot with a great guest. Smart, and had a strategy that genuinely impressed me. The kind of conversation where I walked out thinking this episode is gonna land.

A call for something coming up. Cannot say more yet, but I think our community is really going to love this one.

The new teleprompter. We invested in a proper teleprompter for our long-format scripts, and this was the week I actually sat down to learn it. Setting it up, calibrating it, figuring out the speed, mounting it, the whole production. A reminder that running a media company means you’re constantly learning new gear, software, and acronyms you didn’t even know existed two weeks ago.

And a gimbal. I also picked up a gimbal recently for an upcoming shoot, which is going to open up a whole new set of visual possibilities. It’s the kind of purchase that, three years ago, I would have asked someone else to operate. Now I’m the person operating it. Funny how that happens.

Ticker Take taping, plus AI Under the Hood production. A full week of filming, scripting, and editing. The AI Under the Hood short on Micron and Samsung was a fun one to put together because the story is moving so fast in real time.

Tuesday: bookkeeping and a new firm meeting. Accounting really is the gift that keeps on giving. We met with a new firm this week, the kind of behind-the-scenes founder grind that doesn’t make for fun content but very much makes for a functioning business.

Huron night at the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre

We went to a really special event this week, the launch of the Fairfax Center for Free Enterprise at Huron University. (Jon’s alma mater, if you remember from a past issue.) The room was intimate and full of important leaders and CEOs, with wonderful speakers and the kind of smart conversations that leave you walking out feeling a little more optimistic about the world than when you walked in. We also got to see our friend Wes Hall there, who’s been on the Ticker Take podcast and is best known to most people from Dragons’ Den. Always a joy to catch up with him.

The location made it even better for me. It was held at the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre, a venue I have a very layered history with. In another lifetime, while I was at Ryerson (now TMU), I worked there as an usher and used to operate those old hand-cranked elevators. Later, when I was living in New York and working as a celebrity correspondent for Entertainment Weekly, I would fly back to my hometown of Toronto every September to cover TIFF, sit-down interviews and red carpets, including the red carpet at the Elgin, where I once interviewed Jennifer Lopez, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and Sarah Jessica Parker.

Standing in that lobby this week, in a different outfit and a different life, I had a major flashback. So many versions of me have walked through those doors. The elevators, somehow, have not changed.

There’s something about returning to a place that was once part of your everyday routine that recalibrates your sense of time. I was 20 in that lobby as an usher. I was a little older, holding a mic and waiting for celebrities to come out of a screening. Now I’m building a media company with my husband, and I have two kids who can do their own laundry. (Theoretically. They do not.)

AI Under the Hood this week: memory, Micron, and the Samsung workers threatening to walk out

This week’s AI Under the Hood short is all about the memory chip corner of the AI story, the part nobody is talking about but should be. I get into Micron, why memory is suddenly one of the hottest constraints in the AI build-out, and the Samsung workers threatening to walk out, a development that could ripple across the entire global memory supply.

I dropped it on Instagram, TikTok & YouTube. Plain English, no jargon, the way I always try to do these.

A small confession: the skin tag saga

(Heads up: this one gets a little gross. If you’re squeamish, skip ahead. No hard feelings. I’ll meet you in the next section.)

I need to tell you about my week medically, and I genuinely don’t know if any of you signed up for this. But Jon says I’m basically Larry David from Curb Your Enthusiasm on a daily basis, so consider this your warning; this is one of those weeks.

I had a skin tag. I bought a Dr. Scholl’s skin tag remover from Amazon. I figured: how hard can it be?

Reader, the answer is: hard.

Attempt one: I roped my 15-year-old into reading me the instructions, because she is good with rules and instructions, and I, full disclosure, am not. I also could not see what I was doing. I increasingly need reading glasses for close-up work, and even with them on, the print and the skin tag itself were a blur. I basically needed a flashlight, a magnifying glass, and a younger person reading to me out loud, which somehow is now my reality at this stage of life. She read them out loud. She supervised. She did her job perfectly. I still missed the tag entirely and somehow burned the skin next to it. A clean miss.

Attempt two, one week later: I got the tag this time. Victory! Sort of. The outside of the tag died and fell off cleanly. The inside, however, was very much still alive, exposed, and unhappy. I will spare you the gory details. It hurt. A lot.

At this point, in a moment of true desperation, I considered cutting it off myself. I should mention here that my dad once removed a bump from my shoulder in high school using sterilized surgical scissors and an alcohol wipe. He told me to look out the window, kept me distracted while we talked about whatever was out there, and quickly did the whole thing before I knew what was happening. It healed without a scar. He should have been a surgeon. I am not him.

I did not cut it off.

Enter Ozonal. I ordered Ozonal (a balm apparently created by a Ukrainian doctor, which my dad informs me is relevant because I am part Ukrainian) and some round Band-Aids. Within 24 hours, the whole thing was healing beautifully. By the time I got to my family doctor, she looked at the spot and said it had healed so well it was almost as if nothing had ever happened. I have been a walking Ozonal commercial ever since.

While I was there, she also flagged a different small bump on my chest and wondered about basal cell carcinoma, so I’ll be checking in with a dermatologist in July. Probably nothing, but worth the visit.

The whole experience reinforced one of my core life principles: if you’re going to be a chaotic DIY person, at least know when to stop and call in the professionals. (Reader, I did not call them in soon enough.)

The rest of the week

Cali’s softball. More games, more cold nights in the bleachers, and a school team win that means she’s headed to the playoffs. So proud of her.

Early birthday celebration with Jon’s parents. Cake, family, the works. We celebrated a little ahead of the actual day because life is busy and gathering is more important than calendar accuracy.

Family dinner at my parents’ house. I’m heading to my parents’ for dinner with my sister and her family, which means cousins together, all the cross-table chaos that comes with that, and a few hours in the backyard of the house I’ve called home since I was 11. There’s something about going back to a house you grew up in that resets you in a way nothing else does. I’m looking forward to it.

A long weekend. Fireworks. A pause. The kind of stretch where life slows down enough to actually notice what’s in front of you.

There was lovely, simple time with the kids: a grocery run that turned into a haul of beautiful fruit, homemade banana strawberry pancakes, an afternoon of baking together, a wonderful steak dinner (with steak from Bruno’s, naturally), and a long walk to the beach with my 15-year-old that turned into one of those rare unhurried conversations you don’t see coming and don’t want to end.

We also set up the backyard for the season, which is its own small ritual. Patio furniture out, flowers watered, a trip to the garden centre for palm trees, tropical plants, and a few more blooms. By the end of the afternoon, the yard felt like ours again. Jon and the kids started a volleyball rally that somehow kept going, and I watched from the sidelines (I am a terrible volleyball player, this is a known weakness; basketball is more my sport, and I can hit a baseball but cannot catch one to save my life), glass of Chianti in hand, great tunes playing (Led Zeppelin Radio on Spotify, courtesy of a text from an old high school friend this week, a perfect suggestion), completely content. Today, Jon took Cali to the park to toss the softball around. The kind of weekend that doesn’t make it onto a highlight reel and somehow ends up being the highlight anyway.

Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM

Jon this week: still up at 5, jogging, writing, filming, scripting, shooting for Global X, taping more Ticker Take, prepping for a birthday week he barely has time to acknowledge. The man does not stop.

Me this week: kickboxing, Ticker Take taping, AI Under the Hood production and editing, learning the teleprompter, learning the gimbal, bookkeeping, doctor’s appointment, skin tag aftermath, softball, brand calls, thumbnails, file management, this Substack, and roughly seventeen tabs open on my browser at any given time.

The Wins This Week

• Cali’s softball team is going to playoffs. Proud mom moment.

• New video live: 8 Stocks for a Bull or Bear Market with Jay Hatfield. Watch it.

• New AI Under the Hood: Memory chips, Micron, and the Samsung walkout story. Watch it.

• The skin tag is gone. Pyrrhic victory, but a victory.

• Ozonal: the unexpected MVP of my week. A cult product I will now never shut up about.

• My family doctor approved of my self-healing. I am taking the compliment.

• New teleprompter, set up and operational. Long-format scripting just got a serious upgrade.

• Gimbal in the kit. Ready for the next shoot.

• A beautiful night at the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre, complete with a Wes Hall catch-up and a flashback to my usher and my red carpet days.

• Early birthday celebration with Jon’s parents. Family time we’ll keep.

• A long weekend. Fireworks. Pause. Required.

The Losses This Week

• Sleep: Still none. Still shocking. Still tracking.

• Skin tag attempt one: Wrong target, slight burn. A learning experience.

• Skin tag attempt two: Right target, wrong execution. A very learning experience.

• Pretending to be Larry David in real life: A daily occurrence, per Jon.

The takeaway

This week reminded me that running a business is not just running a business. It’s learning new tools at midnight, going to events that take you back to who you used to be, sitting in waiting rooms with bandaids on, cheering at softball games, celebrating birthdays a little early because the calendar won’t cooperate, and somehow producing content along the way.

The work weeks aren’t separate from life weeks. They’re the same week. The teleprompter and the skin tag exist in the same 168 hours. The Fairfax launch and the bookkeeping meeting too.

That’s the deal. You stop trying to separate them and start letting it all be one thing. The business and the life. The marquee moments and the medical adjectives. The Elgin and Winter Garden and the squirrel-flashback surgical scissors.

It is all the week. And I would not trade it.

Big things coming. Stay tuned.

Thanks for being here. See you next week.

Caroline

P.S. Save the date: wish Jon a happy birthday next Wednesday, May 28th. He will pretend he didn’t see it. He saw it.

Hi, it’s Caroline.

Hi, it’s Caroline.

We landed back in Toronto from New York a week ago, and the NYSE high evaporated approximately the second I opened my email inbox the next morning. A stack of bills, a softball schedule, and roughly 4,000 unread messages, all waiting like they’d been holding a grudge. That’s the deal with these weeks. The marquee moment is fun, the photos are great, the energy is unmatched, and then real life walks back through the door like it never left, with its laundry and its dental appointments and its very long to-do lists.

Welcome to the comedown issue.

The video this week: 4 Mispriced Stocks

We dropped 4 Mispriced Stocks this week, four names where the market may have gotten the price wrong. It’s the kind of episode that’s fun to make because it forces you to do something most investors skip, which is to take a clear-eyed look at what something is actually worth, not what it’s currently trading for. Worth a watch if you’re a value-curious investor, or just want to know what we think the crowd is missing right now.

AI Under the Hood: Anthropic just came for Wall Street

I also filmed a new AI Under the Hood this week, and it’s a big one because the story behind it is genuinely huge.

Anthropic just released 10 new AI agents built specifically for finance. These agents can draft pitch decks, review financial statements, escalate compliance reviews, and basically do the work that armies of junior analysts do every day at the biggest financial institutions in the world. The market noticed immediately, and the reaction was sharp. FactSet, Morningstar, S&P Global, and Moody’s all dropped on the news, with FactSet alone falling 8% in a single trading session.

I broke it all down in the episode, what’s actually happening, who’s at real risk, and the questions every investor should be asking themselves right now. Watch it here.

The Week

Monday: home by 11. Late, tired, and bracing for a Tuesday that arrived way too quickly.

Tuesday onward: bills, brand calls, Zooms, brand campaigns, Global X work for Jon, repeat. This is the unglamorous engine room of running a business, and while it’s not as exciting as ringing a bell at a stock exchange, it’s the part that actually keeps the lights on. The boring stuff is, somehow, always the most important stuff.

A guest interview for an upcoming episode. A great Zoom with someone I cannot yet name, for an episode I cannot yet announce. What I can say is we’ve got something good cooking and I’m excited for you to see it.

More Ticker Take filming with a guest at the home studio. Yes, our home studio, which sits about 20 feet from a kitchen full of teenage snacks and approximately twelve pairs of someone’s shoes by the door. Show business, but make it domestic.

Kickboxing. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in the morning. Two years in and I am, somehow, finally hitting my stride. This week’s highlight: a fellow classmate looked over mid-combo and said “Caroline is killing it today!” I will absolutely be putting that quote in my LinkedIn bio.

Two softball games. Cold ones, again, played at the kind of hour that makes you question your choices and your circulation. I have officially made peace with the fact that watching softball in Canadian May weather, bundled up like I’m waiting for a Greyhound, is now a permanent part of my mothering identity.

My 15-year-old daughter sang a solo at her spring concert.

I’m going to slow down on this one for a second.

She got up on a stage in front of her entire school and sang her solo, and she was genuinely incredible. She has such a beautiful voice, and watching her sing in front of all those people, I was so impressed by her courage. Getting up there at 15, just her and a microphone, is a feat I don’t think I would have had the nerve for at her age. I cried. Of course I cried. Anyone who tells you they don’t cry at their teenager’s school concerts has either never had a teenager or is lying directly to your face, and I will not be taking questions on this.

Mother’s Day, and a morning I won’t forget. This year, my girls spoiled me on their own initiative, with no nudging from Jon, which felt like the win of all wins given that they are 13 and 15 and currently in the developmental phase where being thoughtful toward your mother is sometimes treated as a personal inconvenience. They went out and bought me flowers, hand cream, and a beautiful hair clip. They made me chenille pipe cleaner lilies, which, if you have ever tried to twist a pipe cleaner into a flower shape, you’ll know is no small feat of patience or coordination.

The cards are what got me. They wrote, in their own handwriting, that they couldn’t imagine life without me. They thanked me for being kind, smart, caring, pretty, charismatic, and strong. They wrote about my drive and my passion and called me the glue that holds the family together. Reader, I am the glue. They are not wrong about that. But hearing my teenagers say it on their own, with no prompting and no scripting, in handwriting that I’ve watched evolve since kindergarten, is the kind of moment you fold up carefully and tuck away to pull out on the hard days. I’ll be replaying it for a long while.

Jon, of course, also delivered. He gave me a stunning bunch of long-stem white roses (which meant I had two bouquets on the kitchen table, theirs and his) and a really lovely card. He also offered to drive me to lunch with my mom and sister, which was the plan, right up until our car decided it had other ideas and refused to start. Yes, more car trouble. Possibly the battery, possibly the power steering, possibly something I don’t even know the name of, the car is currently at the shop and the mechanics are working through it.

I ended up taking an Uber. Eventually I sat down to a slow, lovely lunch at Joey’s with my mom and my sister. Two generations of women I love sitting around one table, sharing rosé and farmers market salads at 2 PM, with absolutely no work talk for almost two whole hours, which in my current life feels like a small miracle. I love these lunches.

Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM

Jon this week: still up at 5, jogging, then onto the Global X shoot, then onto Ticker Take, then writing for BNN Bloomberg, then his Trade Off piece for The Globe and Mail, then onto whatever partner call I forgot to put in his calendar. The man does not stop. (See: him not stopping.)

Me this week: kickboxing in the mornings, brand calls all day, AI Under the Hood production, thumbnails, sound fixes, filming our YouTube video, organizing files for production, this Substack, the bills, the kids, the snacks, the laundry pile that came home from New York, and a Mother’s Day that completely undid me in the best possible way.

The Juggle

This week, in no particular order:

• Landed back from NYC late Monday night

• New video live: 4 Mispriced Stocks

• New AI Under the Hood: Anthropic Just Came for Wall Street

• A guest interview for an upcoming episode (cannot say more)

• Ticker Take filming with a guest at the home studio

• Thumbnails, sound fixes, file organization, this Substack

• Bills paid, and then more bills

• Brand calls, brand campaigns, Zooms, repeat

• Jon’s Global X work

• Two cold softball games

• Kickboxing (Mon/Wed/Fri), and a glowing peer review

• 15-year-old’s spring concert solo (I cried)

• Mother’s Day with my girls and Jon, plus a slow afternoon lunch with my sister and mom

• Car trouble (again)

• Scripting, recording, editing, posting, repeat

The Wins This Week

• My 15-year-old’s solo. Top win, no contest.

• Mother’s Day with my girls. Flowers, pipe cleaner lilies, handwritten cards, the works. I will be recovering emotionally for some time.

• Jon’s long-stem white roses and the world’s nicest card. Two bouquets in one day. Spoiled.

• Mother’s Day lunch with my mom and sister, rosé, farmers market salads, and zero work talk for almost two whole hours

• New video live: 4 Mispriced Stocks. Watch it.

• New AI Under the Hood on Anthropic. Hot topic, hot drop.

• A guest interview that left me buzzing. More on that soon.

• Got home from NYC and didn’t fall apart. Clean reentry.

• Two softball games attended. Cold but committed.

• “Caroline is killing it today!” A direct quote, unsolicited, from kickboxing class. I have peaked.

The Losses This Week

• Sleep: New shocking development: still none.

• Bills: Several. They keep coming.

• My eyeliner during the spring concert solo: Did not survive.

• My eyeliner again on Mother’s Day morning: Also did not survive. It was a week.

• The post-NYC laundry pile: Larger than the trip itself.

• The car: At the shop. Cause unclear.

The takeaway

Last week we were in a building made of marble, ringing bells, hearing our name called from a stage in front of a room of people in the industry. This week, I’m sitting in our home studio with a teenager’s empty cereal bowl on the counter, watching my older daughter find a part of her voice I’d never heard before, opening cards from both of my girls, and crying twice in three days for completely different reasons.

There’s something my video this week got me thinking about. The market gets prices wrong all the time, and so do we. We overvalue the marquee weeks and undervalue the quiet ones. The NYSE shoot was big and it mattered and I’ll remember it forever. But the spring concert, the pipe cleaner lilies, the cards, the long afternoon over rosé with my sister and my mom? Those were the moments of the week, and I would not have traded a single one of them for anything.

The real wins are usually mispriced too. They rarely come with a stock ticker.

Happy belated Mother’s Day to anyone reading this who needed it.

Big things coming. Stay tuned.

Thanks for being here. See you next week.

Caroline

P.S. Jon’s Substack this week is worth a read. Subscribe if you haven’t, you’ll get both sides of our brain.

Hi, it’s Caroline.

A few weeks ago I told you we had two cities and two trips on the calendar. Well, one of them is checked off: this week we were back in New York to film our first-ever Ticker Take episode at the NYSE and a really awesome creator event.

Yes, first-ever. After all the visits, the closing bells, the wall signatures, this was the first time we actually shot the show inside the building. A big, big deal.

If you’re keeping score: that’s two NYSE moments in three issues of this newsletter. I’m not saying we’re regulars, but the security guards are starting to wave.

Oh, and one other thing happened this week. Ticker Take is officially trademarked. More on that in a sec.

NYC: our first-ever Ticker Take episode at the NYSE

This is the one I want to slow down on, because it’s a moment we’ll remember.

We were up in Studio 2, with the NYSE floor visible right below us through the glass. The energy of that building is unmatched. The history is everywhere. And there we were, filming our very first episode of Ticker Take inside it. For a brand that, 18 months ago, didn’t exist.

Let me say that again: 18 months from launch to filming our show at the New York Stock Exchange. I still have to say it out loud sometimes to believe it.

The baseball cards finally happened. Jon loves baseball, and he dreamed up the Ticker Take baseball cards idea ages ago. We'd been talking about it for months and months, and I finally pushed it across the finish line in time for the NYSE event. People loved them. There's something fun about a tactile, collectible thing in an industry that lives mostly on screens. They were a hit.

Reunions on the floor. Jon got to reconnect with his former Bloomberg colleague Michele Steele right there on the floor of the exchange, which felt very full-circle for him. And in the Board Room (a stunning, ornate space of gold and white reserved for the NYSE’s distinguished guests), we ran into our old friend Jane King, a finance reporter we knew well from our New York years. We used to live in this city. Coming back, especially to the NYSE, is like a warm hug. Like coming home for an afternoon.

The CRTR event at NYSE. The room was packed, including a strong showing from creators, which says a lot about where this industry is heading. Got to connect with partners, hear what’s happening from the people actually moving things, and remember why we love this corner of finance in the first place.

And then this happened. During the panel at the event, Joe Benarroch, the NYSE’s head of media partnerships, gave us a shoutout from the stage. He named CNBC, TBPN, and TICKER TAKE / Jon Erlichman in the same breath. Sitting in that room, in that building, hearing our name listed alongside those names, it’s a moment.
Here is the clip:

We also have big things in the works for Ticker Take that we’ll be sharing soon. Strategy meetings happened, plans were made, and I left the week with that specific kind of excited-anxious feeling that means something good is coming.

That’s all I’m saying for now. (I know. I’m sorry. Soon.)

We are officially trademarked

This week, Ticker Take received its trademark. Officially. Legally. Forever.

It’s the kind of thing that sounds like a formality until you’re the one waiting for it. We’ve been working toward this since the very early days, and now it’s done. Our name, our brand, our thing, protected. It feels small and enormous at the same time.

A note for fellow founders: I filed it myself. Every trademark agent and lawyer I spoke to wanted to charge a lot of money to do it on our behalf. The form is not what I’d call intuitive, but it’s doable. If you’re scrappy and have a little time, you can do it on your own. Trademark your name early. Future you will thank you.

The video this week: 5 Software Stocks AI Can’t Replace

We dropped 5 Software Stocks AI Can’t Replace this week, and it’s one of those topics that seems to find a new layer every time we revisit it. AI is eating a lot of categories. But there are software companies whose moats are real, whose customers are sticky, and whose value goes beyond what a model can spit out.

If you’ve been wondering where to look in software right now, this one’s for you. Worth a watch.

Caroline’s corner: AI Under the Hood

Outside of the long-format videos, I’ve been running a shorts series called AI Under the Hood, where I dig into the companies actually powering the AI boom. I break it down in plain English, no jargon, no buzzwords, just what these companies actually do and why they matter.

This week’s episode was on SanDisk and Western Digital, and it took off, almost 100 shares on Instagram, which is a serious moment for a short. (For the uninitiated: Instagram users do not share things lightly. You earn that share button.)

I’ll drop the video in here so you can watch it. If you’ve been enjoying the series, the best thing you can do is share it forward.

What I actually do around here

Since I’ve been getting some questions about what my role is in all of this beyond “co-founder and Jon’s wife”: here’s the rough rundown.

I co-host our YouTube show. I run overarching strategy, where Ticker Take is going, who we partner with, and what we say yes and no to. Jon calls me the “boss.” I’m essentially the business brain side of the operation.

I also shoot the long-form YouTube show and handle all video production, sound, mics, equipment, field-shoot gear, and the whole technical setup. I make thumbnails. I help shape script ideas. I produce and edit the AI Under the Hood weekly shorts. I manage the handover pipeline for our partner BNN Bloomberg’s digital properties (ensuring our content lands cleanly on their end). I write this Substack. I edit promos. I run the brand partnership operations side. And I wear a billion other hats I’m probably forgetting.

Oh, and apparently now I also make baseball cards.

Glamorous? No. Necessary? Extremely.

The Week

Jon’s content factory. Jon was shooting for Global X this week on top of our regular Ticker Take production. Between his shoots, our shoots, his writing, and editing, I’m not sure he sat down for more than 12 minutes.

Editing marathons. Jon and I lived inside CapCut this week, editing shorts late into every night. (We have a whole post-production pipeline for the long videos, but the shorts are ours.)

Partner meetings. Several this week. Conversations about where things are going, what we want to build next, and how to keep delivering for the brands that have shown up for us. (Brands: thank you. We see you.)

Strategy sessions. The kind where you walk in with a whiteboard and walk out with a roadmap. More to share soon.

Tax payments, paid. The Canadian government generously accepted all of our money this week. They were very gracious about it. We’ll begin the process of earning it back tomorrow.

Older daughter at the orthodontist. Her jaw has decided to start clicking, which is fun and not stressful at all. We’ll figure it out.

Younger daughter at the dermatologist (virtually). A telehealth appointment, which I am genuinely grateful for. One less waiting room, one less commute, same medical advice. The future is now and I am here for it.

Softball games at night. Our older daughter had games this week, played at 8:30 PM in Canadian May weather (which is to say, cold). Bundled up in the bleachers, watching her play, is genuinely one of the best parts of my schedule. There’s something about a softball field, even a freezing one, that resets your brain.

Two years of kickboxing. April marked my two-year kickboxing-iversary. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, in the morning. Meanwhile Jon, ever the morning person, continued his early jogs. Between us, we cover most of the cardio bases.

The 50 Strong experiment (and my failures within it). Jon and I are doing 50 Strong, a 50-day program that tasks you with: 30 minutes of movement a day, 30 minutes of no screens before bed, no junk food, drinking lots of water, and no alcohol Monday through Friday. The fitness, the no junk food, the screen-free wind-down, the water, all going great. The “no alcohol” part? Reader, I am failing miserably. Between travel, late nights, and the occasional after-NYSE glass of Pinot Grigio, the dry weeknights have been more aspirational than actual. I’m still showing up. I’m just also, sometimes, showing up with a Pinot.

Devil Wears Prada 2 with our 13-year-old. Saturday night, before our early Sunday flight, we took her to see The Devil Wears Prada 2. The theater’s “Butter Birkin” bucket was sold out (a tragedy I’m still processing), but the rest of the night more than made up for it. She rested her head on my shoulder during the movie. Eye rolls were down. There were maybe two, lol, but I’m choosing to remember the head-on-shoulder part. These moments are increasingly rare with a 13-year-old and I am collecting them like trading cards. (Yes, this meant we missed the Kentucky Derby. The movie won. No regrets.)

About that Kentucky Derby... When life isn't quite this hectic, I'm one of those people who loves throwing a Derby party. Hats, mint juleps, big colorful brunch, full commitment to the bit. But it's been two years now. Last year, Jon was in the hospital with pneumonia, and both girls had pneumonia at the same time (yes, all three at once, a moment in our family history we do not speak of). This year, we were heading to NYC for the show. So the Derby has been bumped two years running. The hats will return. I'm already manifesting next year.

The Milli Vanilli doc, watched. Wild ride. I have thoughts.

Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM

Jon this week: up early, jogging at an hour when most people are still in REM sleep, then onto the Global X shoot, then onto Ticker Take, then writing for BNN Bloomberg, then his Trade Off piece for The Globe and Mail, then probably a meeting I forgot about. The man does not stop.

Me this week: CapCut by day, thumbnails by every available minute, kickboxing on Mon/Wed/Fri mornings, partner emails by night, and a small but persistent attempt to get to bed before midnight that has, so far, failed every single night. The 11 PM brain is winning.

The Juggle

This week, in no particular order:

• NYC: our first-ever Ticker Take episode filmed at the NYSE + ETF event + Joe Benarroch shoutout

• Ticker Take baseball cards, finally made and finally a hit

• Reunions on the NYSE floor (Michele Steele) and in the Board Room (Jane King)

• Ticker Take officially trademarked (DIY edition)

• New video live: 5 Software Stocks AI Can’t Replace

• New AI Under the Hood short on SanDisk and Western Digital (and a near-100-share moment on Instagram!)

• Thumbnails, scripts, edits, promos, BNN Bloomberg digital handover, this Substack

• Jon shooting for Global X

• Strategy meetings about big upcoming things

• Partner meetings

• Older daughter’s ortho appointment + freezing 8:30 PM softball games

• Younger daughter’s virtual dermatologist appointment

• Kickboxing (Mon/Wed/Fri mornings) and jogging (Jon, certified morning person)

• 50 Strong, mostly winning, with one notable Pinot-shaped exception

• A meaningful contribution to the Government of Canada

• Devil Wears Prada 2 with our 13-year-old (and a tragically sold-out Butter Birkin)

• Milli Vanilli documentary, finally watched

• Recording, editing, scripting, posting, repeat

The Wins This Week

• Ticker Take is officially trademarked. Our name, our brand, ours.

• First-ever Ticker Take episode filmed at the NYSE. I’m still processing it.

• The baseball cards, finally launched. People loved them. Worth every late night I spent on them.

• Reuniting with Michele Steele and Jane King in the building where so much of our New York life used to happen

• Joe Benarroch shoutout. CNBC, TBPN, Ticker Take. That sentence will live in my head for a while.

• New video live: 5 Software Stocks AI Can’t Replace. Watch it.

• AI Under the Hood: SanDisk + Western Digital had its biggest week yet, almost 100 Instagram shares.

• Attended a great ETF event packed with creators, partners, and people we genuinely like working with

• Strategy sessions for big upcoming things. More soon.

• Jon’s Global X shoot in the books

• Family appointments handled, softball games attended, kids fed. A clean sweep.

• Two years of kickboxing. I’m choosing to count this as a personal milestone.

• A 13-year-old’s head on my shoulder in a movie theater. Top win of the week, full stop.

The Losses This Week

• Sleep: Still insufficient. New shocking development: none.

• Tax day: Funded a portion of public infrastructure. Proud, in theory. Lighter in the wallet, in practice.

• Ortho mysteries: Older daughter’s clicking jaw is now an open investigation

• 8:30 PM softball in Canadian May weather: I have rediscovered all my lost feeling in my fingers, eventually

• 50 Strong, the “dry weeknight” portion: Pinot Grigio, 1. Caroline, 0.

• The Kentucky Derby: Two years and counting. Hats benched. Hopes high.

• The Butter Birkin bucket: Sold out. We will recover.

The takeaway

Filming our first-ever Ticker Take episode at the NYSE was the kind of milestone you don’t really plan for. You hope for it. You imagine it. And then one day, you’re sitting in Studio 2 with the floor below you, your husband across the desk, baseball cards in your bag, an old friend in the Board Room, and you realize that 18 months of building has quietly added up to this.

Hearing our name said out loud from a stage there, alongside CNBC and TBPN, was a moment I’ll carry. And then you come home, build thumbnails, edit shorts in CapCut, drive your kid to the orthodontist, sit in a freezing bleacher, take your 13-year-old to a movie, and remember that the actual work happens in the small daily things, not the marquee ones.

This week had both. The first-ever NYSE shoot and the orthodontist waiting room. The trademark certificate and the tax bill. The Joe Benarroch shoutout and a head on my shoulder during a movie I will fully admit I enjoyed. The 50 Strong fitness wins and the 50 Strong Pinot losses. The reunion in the Board Room and the freezing softball bleacher.

That’s the deal. You don’t get one without the other.

Big things coming. Stay tuned.

Thanks for being here. See you next week.

Caroline

P.S. Jon’s Substack this week is worth a read, subscribe if you haven’t, you’ll get both sides of our brain.

Last week we were celebrating 3 billion views, and Jon was ringing bells at the NYSE. This week, I spent an inordinate amount of my life on hold with the insurance company because one of our car lights decided to break in a way that apparently requires three phone calls, two emails, and a small human sacrifice to resolve.

Building a financial media network? Manageable. Getting a working headlight replaced in a reasonable timeframe? Apparently out of reach.

Which, as it happens, is a pretty perfect metaphor for this week’s Ticker Take video.

The video this week: bruised, battered, built to last

We sat down with Thomas Martin to break down 12 Stocks to Own, the names built to weather whatever the market throws at them. Not the flashy picks. Not the momentum plays. The ones that have been beaten up, doubted, and written off, and kept showing up anyway.

Honestly, it tracked with how this whole week felt. You know those stretches where nothing major is breaking, but a hundred small things are? That was us. Small fires, small wins, small expenses, small headaches. The kind of week that builds resilience by sheer attrition.

If you haven’t watched it yet, Bruised but Built to Last: 12 Stocks to Own is up now. It’s a genuinely useful one if you’re thinking about the durable corner of your portfolio.

The Week

Meetings. So many meetings. We spent hours this week talking about what’s next for the podcast, where our show is headed, and what the rest of the year looks like. The kind of meetings where you walk away energized and slightly overwhelmed, which is roughly our baseline state at this point.

The car fiasco. See above. I’ve aged three additional years since Monday.

One less eye-rolling teenager in the house. Our younger daughter was away on her Grade 8 grad camping trip, which meant a temporary 50% reduction in eye rolls directed at us. It was peaceful. It was also a little quiet. Funny how that works.

Huron night. Jon emceed an event for Huron University (his alma mater), and we had one of those nights you don’t plan for but remember. Great people, great conversations, and a reminder that Jon’s network is basically a Rolodex of every interesting person in Canadian business.

YouTube strategy session. We sat down with our YouTube strategy team to look at the next phase of growth. A lot of good questions, a lot of “let’s test that,” and a few ideas that made me want to start editing immediately (at 11 PM, obviously).

Another brand deal, signed. Can’t say who yet. But it’s a good one. Coming soon.

A weekend road trip to Prince Edward County. We went out to celebrate Jon’s mom’s 80th birthday, which was already going to be a special weekend on its own. Then the universe got weird in the best way: it coincidentally lined up with a friend’s 50th and my sister being in town, plus a handful of other friends. None of it was planned. We didn’t coordinate a single thing. The universe just put everyone in the same place at the same time and said enjoy. And we did.

My older daughter got a summer job! A small thing on paper, a huge thing in our house. Her first real job. I’m proud of her, and also strangely emotional about the fact that she’s old enough to have one. (Excuse me while I go look at her baby photos and quietly fall apart.)

Suddenly an accountant. Filed taxes this week, because running a small business means at some point you stop being a founder and become a part-time bookkeeper. Spreadsheets, receipts, expense categories, GST/HST. None of this was in the brochure when we signed up to make financial news fun.

Two trips on the calendar. Two cities. Two very different trips. More on both soon. For now let’s just say one of them involves NYC again (because apparently we cannot stay away) and the other is our first time down to Austin for work. That’s all I’m going to say, for now.

Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM

Jon this week: up at 5, wrote his BNN Bloomberg piece, filmed Monday through Friday, emceed a room full of Huron alumni, and wrote his Trade Off column for The Globe and Mail somewhere in between. I’m pretty sure he also slept at some point.

Me this week: on hold with the insurance company, on calls with brand partners, on the YouTube strategy Zoom, on the couch at 10 PM answering more emails. Somewhere between hour twelve and hour thirteen of my average day, I remembered I used to have hobbies.

It’s fine. It’s all fine.

The Juggle

This week, in no particular order:

• Insurance company hold music (I now know it by heart)

• Podcast meetings, show meetings, general-direction-of-the-business meetings

• Huron University event

• Older daughter’s softball (and her new summer job!)

• Younger daughter packed up and shipped off to grad camp (she had a blast)

• Weekend in Prince Edward County for Jon’s mom’s 80th

• Planning the logistics for our two upcoming trips

• Recording, editing, scripting, posting, repeat

The Wins This Week

• New video live: Bruised but Built to Last: 12 Stocks to Own with Thomas Martin. Watch it.

• Another brand partnership signed (details soon)

• Two exciting trips on the calendar. NYC and Austin. That’s all you’re getting.

• Jon’s mom’s 80th in Prince Edward County, plus the universe-engineered reunion that came with it

• Older daughter’s first summer job, a milestone in this house

• Younger daughter’s grad camp, she had the best time and came home exhausted and happy, which is the whole goal of camp

The Losses This Week

• Car lights: One broken headlight, approximately seventeen phone calls, one minor existential crisis

• Insurance hold music: Still playing somewhere in my brain on a loop and doing the hold music dance.

• Older daughter’s eye rolls: Up, to compensate for the younger daughter being away. The ecosystem always finds balance.

• Sleep: Unchanged. Which is to say, insufficient.

The takeaway

There’s something to the Built to Last thesis that I keep thinking about this week. Those stocks aren’t the ones everyone’s excited about. They’re the ones that have been through something, gotten hit, stayed standing, and are quietly still doing the work.

Entrepreneurs are kind of like that too. Most weeks aren’t the NYSE week. Most weeks are the insurance-hold-music week. You get bruised by small things. You get battered by small fires. You keep going anyway, because the alternative is not going, and we didn’t come this far to stop.

But you also get the Prince Edward County weekends. The unplanned reunions. Your daughter’s first summer job. The reminders that the work is the point, but so is the rest of it.

Built to last.

Thanks for being here. See you next week.

Caroline

P.S. Jon’s Substack this week goes deeper on the markets side. Subscribe if you haven’t, you’ll get both sides of our brain.

Hi, I’m Caroline.

You probably know my husband Jon from Ticker Take with Jon Erlichman, the daily short videos, the weekly long-format breakdowns, the Substack where he actually explains what the stock market is doing and why you should care. That’s his lane. He’s great at it. He also wakes up at an hour that should be illegal.

This is the other lane. The Take Down is the behind-the-curtain version. What it actually looks like to build a financial digital media network out of a home studio, with two teenage daughters, a marriage, a content machine that never sleeps, and a founding team small enough to count on one hand.

So before I get to this week, and it was a week, let me rewind.

October 2024: the all-in era

When we launched Ticker Take, Jon stepped down from the anchor chair. I shut down Rainbow Ray Society, my art and design business, and left my acting career (only to be revived momentarily with a sketch comedy show at Second City a couple of weeks ago, which is another crazy thing to do while managing a digital empire, but more on that another time). We bet the farm on an idea: financial news could actually be fun. Engaging. Something you’d want to watch, not something you tolerate while waiting for the weather.

Here’s what that bet looked like in practice:

• Our older daughter was doing competitive swim seven times a week at the Pan Am Centre, an hour away.

• I was driving her there and back while simultaneously editing videos in the car, learning Adobe Premiere in real time, and fighting to figure out the best sound design, mics, and everything else audio (still the toughest nut, by the way).

• Jon was doing the same drives, and given his propensity for early mornings, he had the fun job of the 4:30 AM Saturdays. While launching a startup.

• In between, we were building the studio. Building the set. Building the brand. Building the team.

It was unhinged. We knew it was unhinged. But we were all-in, and that turned out to matter.

This week: 3 billion views and a trip to the NYSE

Fast forward to this week and, deep breath, we hit 3 billion views on Ticker Take.

Three. Billion.

Jon flew to New York to be at the NYSE in person, where they helped us celebrate the milestone as our media partner, right alongside BNN Bloomberg, who is also a media partner and has been instrumental in helping us get to 3 billion. The story got picked up by the Associated Press, Yahoo Finance, Talking Biz News, Morningstar, KTLA, and more. A huge thank you also to our founding sponsor Global X, who has been with us since day one.

(Sidebar: I had my own NYSE moment back in February, when Jon and I were in New York for our partnership day. I rang the closing bell and signed the infamous NYSE wall. Sydney Sweeney signed it a week later. I’m choosing to believe our signatures are now neighbors forever. What a thrill.)

I stayed back in Toronto this time to run the rest of the business. Launching our video for the week, making sure it landed seamlessly on our partner BNN Bloomberg’s digital properties, managing brand deals, invoicing, production, and the many kids’ appointments stacked into the week. Dermatologist, dentist, ear doc, eye doc. One of those stretches where every single practitioner apparently colluded to be seen at the same time. So while Jon was ringing bells on Wall Street, I was in waiting rooms quietly aging, answering emails between appointments.

Glamorous on both ends, really.

Oh, and in between all of that, Jon was also writing. A lot. His weekly Ticker Take Substack. A companion news article for BNN Bloomberg that runs alongside our long-format video. A weekly piece for The Globe and Mail tied to their stock market competition, Trade Off. Market Moves for Global X. Brand scripts. Our weekly long-form video script. When he’s not on camera, he’s on a keyboard. (See: 50 emails before 7 AM.)

Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about husband-and-wife co-founders: we don’t actually work the same hours. We work opposite hours, and somehow that’s the secret.

Jon wakes up to 50 emails. 20 of them from me. He’s answered half of them before I’ve opened one eye. He’s a morning person in the full, unbearable sense of the word. Cheerful at 6 AM, already thinking about markets, already three steps into the day.

My brain turns on around 11 PM. (It used to be 1 AM. I’m getting old. Ha.) I’m the one spinning late, reworking a thumbnail, answering a partnership email, sketching out what next week looks like, emailing Jon the aforementioned 20 things. By the time his first alarm goes off, I’ve handed the baton.

It means the business is basically staffed around the clock by two people who love each other and happen to have complementary circadian rhythms. Romantic? Sure. Efficient? Absolutely. Sustainable? Ask me in six months.

The Juggle

This week, in no particular order:

• Auditions for our older daughter squeezed between recording and editing

• Volleyball pickup for the younger one

• Softball for the older one

• One of us working upstairs, the other downstairs, texting from inside the same house because we’re both on calls

• A milestone at the NYSE

• A brand shoot

• Jon’s weekly writing load: Ticker Take Substack, BNN Bloomberg article, Trade Off for The Globe and Mail, Market Moves for Global X, brand scripts, and our weekly long-form video script

• The aforementioned medical appointment tour of Toronto

• Regular life. Dinners, homework, the laundry that apparently regenerates

Compartmentalizing marriage, business, and parenting is a juggle. But it’s a juggle we make work because we genuinely love what we’re building. Some people cannot fathom how a husband and wife co-run a company out of a home studio. Most days, honestly, neither can we. But we do.

The Wins This Week

• 3 billion views on Ticker Take

• Jon at the NYSE, in person, representing what we’ve built together

• Press pickup from AP, Yahoo Finance, Talking Biz News, Morningstar, KTLA, and more

• Gratitude to our media partners at the NYSE and BNN Bloomberg, and to our founding sponsor Global X, for being in this milestone with us

The Losses This Week

• Sleep: Jon lost hours of it

• Gray hairs: Approximately 47 new ones, by my count

• Middle age maintenance: Jon has Rogaine, I have Botox. (I fought Botox for years, by the way. Then a couple of years ago, one deep forehead line forced me right off the cliff. No regrets.) We’re fighting back middle age at the same time we’re fighting for market share.

• Teenage daughters: Approximately 3 billion eye rolls (one for every view, apparently)

• The great modern parenting irony: Discipline now means taking away screen time, even though our entire business is built on making content for screens.

Why I’m writing this

Being an entrepreneur means working 24/7. The content machine genuinely does not stop. There are weeks I question all of our life choices and weeks where everything clicks and I remember why we jumped. This week was the second kind.

There’s a line from the novelist Anthony Trollope:

“A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.”

We’re not Hercules. We’re just two people who show up every single day. A video. An article. A script. A school pickup. An email at 11 PM. Another one at 6 AM. The daily task, over and over. That’s the whole game.

The Take Down is going to be my honest take on all of it. The wins, the losses, the 11 PM rabbit holes, the parenting-while-building, the partnership that makes it all possible. If Ticker Take is the polished product, this is the footage that ends up on the cutting room floor.

Thanks for being here. See you next week.

Caroline

P.S. If you haven’t subscribed to Jon’s Substack for the actual market takes, do that too. You’ll get both sides of our brain.

Subscribe now