Blog for Summer 2026

Football, West Coast, East Coast, AI Prevails

Did you watch the World Cup of Football?  What a run by Canada to get to the round of 32.  Historic and great for our country.  There were some good upsets along the way with a great final between Spain and Argentina.  I thought the Spanish were dominant in the final and deserved to win.  As for the bronze medal game, England prevailed over France, and it was a crazy game of back-and-forth goals.  Watching the English lead slip away from 4-0 felt like watching the Toronto Maple Leafs play.  Ouch.

I am watching many of the later round games from Tofino.  Denise, Addison and I were on a west coast road trip.  We landed in Vancouver for a few days, visited Whistler, Victoria and settled into Tofino for a few days.  We did quite a bit of hiking with the biggest challenge being our accent from the village base to the peak of Blackcomb Mountain.  Six kms, 3,800 feet of elevation and a couple of hours of straight uphill climbing.  It was a slow gruelling climb until our pace picked up markedly when we spotted a black bear heading toward our path.  Eek.  I know they are more or less harmless and they are still intimidating in person.  We managed to avoid being eaten thankfully.

I took in a Northern Super League professional women’s soccer game while in Vancouver.  Vancouver Rise lost to FC Toronto that day.  It was a great experience and great soccer.  I sat with the dad of one of the Vancouver players originally from Cambridge, ON and learned quite a bit about the league and players.  If you get a chance, take in a game.

Denise and I will be splitting our down time between the west and east coasts for the next few years. 

Alex and Yvonne are settled into Pemberton finally after they finished up building a garden shed for me in Whitby.  It was nice to spend time and have them close to home during that time.

Addison has decided to accept an offer to study at my alma mater, Dalhousie University.She is taking a general bachelor of science and is excited to be heading east for school.  We are really happy with her decision as Halifax is a great city and Dal is a great school.

We finally got through Addison’s grade twelve prom breakfast, prom, graduation breakfast, graduation, senior class sunrise, senior class sunset, senior class day at the beach…blah blah blah.  The end of high school seemed to never end!  I don’t recall any of this in my day.  It was congratulations, here’s your diploma and see you later, now go get a degree and a job. 

Speaking of a making a move, our RBC DS branch successfully moved to a new building in Whitby.  We are settling in and getting used to our new quarters.  It’s new and bright with lots of room for expansion, which was missing in our former Oshawa location.  The outside of the new building still has ongoing construction, which we are managing and which will improve with time.

The GWM personnel has changed slightly.  Mark Gendy has moved to a new team for some additional and new opportunities for his career.  We welcomed Alex Wakida to the team recently in his place.  Alex is a bright young man with a great future ahead of him.  He has his second level CFA (a new three level, high watermark standard for our industry), has a good base of understanding of our business and is quickly learning his duties. 

Ava Wilson has also been spending much of her summer job position with our team.Ava is heading into her fourth year at Western as a BComm marketing major.  I think she is considering a switch to the investment world because she sees how much fun we have in our profession and how cool we are.  If Mark, Alex and Ava are indicators of our young people today, we are in good hands.

My last blog at Easter commented on oil prices moving higher with the closing of the Strait of Hormuz.  The Strait opened for a time and is now more of less closed again with the renewed fighting going on between Iran and the USA.  Negotiations have stalled again between the two sides. 

To date, the impact of higher oil prices on inflation of goods appears to be transient in nature.  However, with the failure of an agreement and renewed fighting, longer term structural inflation problems may become an issue.  Global oil reserves are also at all time lows, which leaves less room to manage the impact of further oil supply shocks on inflation.

New Fed Governor, Kevin Warsh, has vowed to do any and everything to bring inflation down to its target of 2%.  Core inflation is still running hot in the USA at 3.4%.  The potential for higher inflation due to oil price issues raises the potential that the Federal Reserve hikes rates faster and higher than expected.Two rate hikes are expected this year and that could quickly change.  Investors like low interest rates as it encourages consumer and business spending and investment.  Higher rates are not well loved.

Higher inflation may also have larger impacts on the November mid-term elections as USA voters feel the impact of higher prices and vote for change.  This flies in the face of President Trump’s message that the economy is doing great and inflation issues are only a short-term issue.  This may not be good news for the President and the Republican party.

None-the-less equity markets were on a tear during the second quarter due to strong earnings from corporate America and continued efficiency gains from artificial intelligence adoption.  This should carry over to the second half of 2026 and into 2027.

On a more positive outlook for the markets, we have moved some cash off the sidelines and sit at approximately 15% cash from 35% previously.  We continue to look at new opportunities in the AI space to introduce and / or add to existing positions.  This is still a long-term theme we like despite short term volatility in the sector.  Last quarter semi-conductors were up 88%, with tech up 43% in general.  Crazy, right?

We are committed to being overweight the USA equity markets overall for the great investment opportunities in leading global companies as well as AI opportunities.

We continue to review cash positions and current holdings.  We undertook to move many of our mutual fund holdings to lower cost equivalent exchange traded funds where appropriate.  We were careful not to trigger large capital gains for clients unnecessarily.

That’s about it for now.  Have a great summer.  I will probably blog again from Halifax in September. 

Cheers.

Miles…