Author: Sam Allcock
These days, Coal Harbour is especially quiet. The brochures still include champagne shots and expansive views, and the sales offices still glow at night, but the foot traffic has decreased in a way that seasoned agents claim they have never seen before. Interest rates make up a portion of it. The general cooling that affected Canadian housing after 2022 is partly to blame. However, anyone strolling through the city’s upscale skyscrapers can sense something different beneath them—something more structural and subdued. Questions are now being asked about the money that used to flow freely. Vancouver’s luxury market existed in a…
These days, Aspen’s storefronts, private jets parked at Sardy Field, and snow aren’t the first things you notice. It’s the quiet in some areas. Owned but barely inhabited, homes sit in the dark for months, waiting for a wedding in July or a long weekend in February. The town is now referred to by the locals as “Income Village,” which sounds almost endearing until you consider what it really means. Currently, the median price of a home in Aspen is approximately $13.4 million. You can infer some information from that number alone, but not the complete picture. The true story…
Not too long ago, investing in an S&P 500 fund seemed like the best use of one’s income. Five hundred American businesses on a single ticket—the kind of choice that inspired Jack Bogle to start a movement. When you walk into any 401(k) enrollment meeting across the nation, someone will still be pointing to a graph showing the index steadily rising to the right. What lies beneath the line is the issue. Approximately thirty cents of every dollar invested in a typical S&P 500 fund today is held by just five companies. Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Alphabet. Depending on…
According to the Parramatta mortgage broker, she can typically determine whether the person on the other end has completed their calculations within thirty seconds of a phone call. Those who haven’t seem at ease. Those who have are more reserved. The silence is unfamiliar to her after nine years of doing this. Sydney economists have begun referring to this silence as the “mortgage cliff,” though some prefer the term “edge of cliff,” which the banks themselves now use in retention discussions. It describes the point at which fixed-rate loans made during the pandemic, when money was practically free, expire and…
Netflix’s social media responses to its initial warning that password sharing would no longer be accepted appeared to be a minor uprising. An awkward 2017 post from Netflix itself was uncovered by some: “Love is sharing a password.” For months, the irony persisted. Observing it from the outside, it seemed as though Netflix had finally chosen a battle it might not win. After two years, the image has changed. When the crackdown was implemented nationwide in late May 2023, it accomplished something that most analysts secretly questioned. It brought in a staggering sum of money for Netflix. With over 100…
In recent months, there has been a certain silence surrounding Robinhood’s marketing. Retirement accounts are now being sold by the company that once flourished on the cacophony of meme stocks, the chaos of GameStop, and the cultural ambush of Reddit-driven trading. This is almost embarrassingly conventional. Writing that sentence feels weird. The foundation of Robinhood’s brand was the notion that Wall Street was a closed club and that its app, with its confetti animations and zero-commission trades, was the crowbar forcing its doors open. In 2021, that framing made sense. In 2026, when the company is targeting the same group…
Observing a central banker discuss housing causes a strange unease. Like a man walking around glass on a kitchen floor, Tiff Macklem does it cautiously and almost reluctantly. The governor of the Bank of Canada reiterated the same unsettling theme in Mexico City last fall and again in Ottawa this June: monetary policy is the only tool at his disposal, but it cannot solve the nation’s housing crisis. The tension in that sentence is difficult to ignore. The center of his discomfort is Toronto. In May 2026, the Greater Toronto Area benchmark price fell to $946,500, a nearly seven percent…
On a Saturday morning, you can spot a certain type of customer at a Lululemon store: the person standing close to the counter, waiting to inquire about the trade-in, while carrying a folded stack of older leggings in a tote bag. They’re not here to indulge. They are here to trade. Furthermore, the company’s long-term strategy is benefiting more from that minor, nearly unnoticeable exchange than from the majority of its most recent product launches. The core of the entire operation is the Like New program, which was extended nationally on Earth Day in 2022 following a pilot in Texas…
Doesn’t the phrase have a certain absurdity reminiscent of Star Wars? Who fired first? Fans have been debating Greedo and Han Solo in a Mos Eisley cantina for almost thirty years. The same question is now being asked about the United States and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz in an odd echo. This time, the response affects freight rates, oil prices, and the anxiety of every trader between Singapore and Stamford. The incident on Thursday happened quickly and badly. Each side says the other started shooting. Statements from both sides appear to have been written by attorneys rather than…
It doesn’t feel like a road at all to enter Big Cypress. It’s a thin gray ribbon stretched across slough and sawgrass, the kind of spot where, at dusk, a barred owl will perch on a fencepost and look down at you. That fencepost was brand-new last summer. The fencing it supported, the floodlights that hummed above it, and the twenty-odd acres of brand-new asphalt that were poured nearly overnight to house what Florida officials jokingly dubbed Alligator Alcatraz were all equally impressive. Vendors at the location are allegedly being instructed to begin packing up less than a year later.…