This week's interesting finds

This week in charts

Declining working-age population in the U.S., China, Europe and Japan

Capacity for ammonia, a key fertilizer, is down 

‘Most active fund managers should quit’

In [Blue Whale co-founder Stephen] Yiu’s view, the vast middle ground of more conservatively run active strategies, including most of the offerings from large fund houses, should go.

In the first half of this year, just 30 per cent of active funds have performed better than passive alternatives tracking the markets in which they invest, according to research from investment platform AJ Bell.

The bulk of the UK active management industry, Yiu argues, does not devote enough personnel to stock picking and tends to hedge bets by having a large number of stocks in a portfolio. Lack of time to do extensive research makes fund managers reluctant to make bold calls.

“There is a lot of career risk if you don’t have enough resources,” said Yiu, 44, who worked as a fund manager for larger companies including Artemis and Hargreaves Lansdown before Hargreaves backed him to launch Blue Whale, seeding the fund with £25mn of his own money.

The Impact of Uncertainty on Behaviour

There is an important distinction between risk and uncertainty (ambiguity). For example, when we roll dice, we can calculate precisely the odds of any outcome. And using actuarial tables, we can calculate the odds of a 65-year-old living beyond age 85. Uncertainty exists when we cannot calculate the odds. An example would be the uncertainty of another attack such as the one we experienced on September 11, 2001. Unfortunately, investors often confuse the two concepts. The following is an example of confusing risk with uncertainty. 

An insurance company might be willing to take on a certain amount of hurricane risk in Dade and Broward counties in Florida. They would price this risk based on approximately 100 years of data, the likelihood of hurricanes occurring, and the damage they did. But only a foolish insurer would place such a large bet that if more or worse hurricanes occurred than had previously ever been experienced, the company would go bankrupt. That would be ignoring uncertainty — that the future might not look like the past.

Investing in equities is always about uncertainty, not risk. In fact, that is exactly why the equity risk premium has been so high — investors demand a large risk premium to compensate them for taking uncertain “bets”. Those investors who recognise this will avoid the mistake of taking more risk than they have the ability, willingness or need to take, giving themselves the greatest chance of staying disciplined, adhering to their well-thought-out plan. That plan should anticipate the virtual certainty that bear markets will occur and that they are unpredictable in terms of when they will start, how long they will last, and how deep they will be. That understanding will help avoid the mistake of letting their stomachs, and not their heads, make investment decisions. 

This week’s fun finds

The dream (Thai ad)

We played this ad a few years ago at Cymbria Day about the difficulty of reaching your financial goals and how saving just isn’t enough. We thought it was fitting to show it again today:

If Studebaker were still building cars, would Canada still be able to enjoy its beloved Tim Hortons coffee and donuts?

By 1961, [NHL great Tim] Horton was ready to go into new car sales, so he added a Studebaker franchise to his Toronto location. Exactly how involved he was with the Studebaker operation, it's difficult to say: He lent his face and a couple of quotes about the 1962 Studebaker lineup to a couple of well-circulated newspaper ads for the dealership, but references to Tim Horton Motors and to its Studebaker sales tend not to delve much deeper. Horton himself said in a later interview that he didn't care to discuss his pre-donut ventures. "They flopped," he told a reporter. "Let's just leave it at that."

Perhaps Horton got involved with Studebaker only to see the handwriting on the wall. Perhaps he and Care weren't cut out for new car sales. Or perhaps they'd have been better off with another franchise. Whatever the case, Horton had moved on to other business models by the time Studebaker got out of the carmaking business. He first tried building a hamburger drive-in chain with at least three locations in Toronto and one in North Bay, but that too flopped.

Still, he didn't come away from those ventures empty-handed. His time as a car dealer brought him into contact with Jim Charade, who Horton partnered with to build the hamburger stands and, after those closed, to start a small donut-and-coffee shop in May 1964. As with Tim Horton Motors, Tim Horton Donuts operated out of a former gas station, and it's certainly plausible that Charade and Horton chose to open the donut shop in Hamilton due to Horton's familiarity with the city and the Studebaker assembly plant there. (The first Tim Horton Donuts store lies roughly a mile southeast of the former Studebaker plant in Hamilton.)

Why Don’t Millennials Have Hobbies?

When I asked Robert Stebbins, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Calgary who specializes in leisure studies, about whether any of my pandemic pursuits added up to a hobby, he told me that he’s been contemplating questions on the subject for the better part of fifty years. “Leisure, in a common-sense version of it, is fundamentally not work,” he told me over the phone. “It doesn’t define anything. It defines what it’s not.”

So, then, what is it?

“Few people in sociology seem to find this a remarkable or regrettable deficiency in the field,” Stebbins tells me. “Serious leisure,” a term he coined, is the systematic pursuit of an activity—like rock climbing or singing—that usually requires a “special skill.” In other words, we need to put serious effort into a hobby in order to reap its rewards over time. Just like we dedicate our time and energy toward a career, committing ourselves to a “serious leisure” activity is one of the keys to achieving a fulfilling life, he says.

This week's interesting finds

This week in charts

European electricity prices

Median monthly mortgage payments in America

Methane hunters: what explains the surge in the potent greenhouse gas? 

Many researchers initially assumed the increase was linked to fossil fuel production. Methane is the primary ingredient in natural gas but is also produced by other human activities such as landfills, rice paddies and raising cattle.

In the past few years, however, that uptick has accelerated into a surge. The implications for global warming are immense: of the 1.1C increase in global temperatures since pre-industrial times, about a third can be attributed to methane. Atmospheric methane had its highest growth rate ever recorded by modern instruments in 2020, and then that record was broken again in 2021. Nobody knows exactly why.

Atmospheric methane (CH4 mole fraction, parts per billion)

“Methane is a very interesting type of greenhouse gas because it has so many kinds of sources and sinks that you have to keep track of,” says Dlugokencky. “You have to look at it like you are a detective trying to solve a criminal mystery, that is how I think of it.”

Global methane emissions and sinks estimate (2008-17 annual average, million tonnes)

Wetlands and cattle appear to be the biggest culprits, says Euan Nisbet, professor of earth sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London. “The biological sources are increasing faster,” he says. “The most intense growth seems to be coming from the tropics.” A global increase in cattle-raising, and in landfills, is also fuelling the growth in microbial emissions.

In an upcoming paper, Lan and Dlugokencky reach a similar conclusion: 85 per cent of the increase in atmospheric methane since 2007 is due to microbial sources. And about half of that is from the tropics.

This popular type of investment fund nearly always loses money

"When people chase these popular investment themes, they are going to be disappointed," said Itzhak Ben-David, co-author of the study and professor of finance at The Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business.

"These hot-topic funds are based mostly on hype and tend to lose value relative to the general market almost as soon as they are launched."

"These specialized ETFs are all about areas hyped in social media and other platforms as the 'next big thing.' But by the time these ETFs are launched into the market and available to investors, it is already too late to make money," Ben-David said.

"Specialized ETFs are basically boiled down to a soundbite: 'You should invest in electric vehicles,' for example. That's it. Most of the investors in this don't know anything about the stocks in the ETF's portfolio, the fees, the price to earnings ratio. They just want to be part of the trend."

This week’s fun finds

NASA posts what a black hole sounds like. One review: ‘Cosmic horror.'

 My handwriting is terrible. Should I be worried?

But the data show that, when it comes to learning, handwriting definitely matters. Several studies have found that both children and adults learn and remember more when they write by hand. “It stimulates the brain in a very different way than a keyboard does,” says Audrey van der Meer, a neuropsychology professor in Norway whose research on the topic is widely cited.

The withered state of writing has begun to affect other lives too, like those of courtroom handwriting experts. “It’s a concern,” says Steve Cosslett, a British forensic document examiner who has given evidence in hundreds of court cases since he began his career at a Home Office forensic science laboratory in 1983. To check the authenticity of, say, a signature on a will, you need a number of genuine signatures by the writer. But these are harder to find now that people don’t sign things like cheques any more. “People can’t provide sufficient reference material,” he says.

Chicken wing prices down ahead of football season 

This week's interesting finds

This week in charts

The 2020s might be the most volatile period in modern stock market history based on day-to-day change

SPAC Activity in July Reached the Lowest Levels in Five Years

Why invest in nuclear and natural gas?

The world is hungry for energy. Global energy consumption more than doubled between 1971 and 2020, and it’s projected to increase nearly 50% by 2050. It’s clear that we’re going to need a lot more energy than we’re generating now. Some people believe that when we learn to harness new sources of energy, we will stop using our current sources. But that has never been true. Historically, whenever we learned to harness a new energy source, we did not stop using the sources we previously relied on.

Nuclear and natural gas are reliable, affordable, and produce low emissions. They’re not perfect. But their shortcomings are more manageable than the alternatives, and their advantages can’t be beat.

The biggest advantage is that nuclear and natural gas are both extremely reliable sources of power. Nuclear is, in fact, the most reliable of all energy sources.

In addition, both nuclear and natural gas reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Nuclear power plants don’t emit any greenhouse gases or air pollution while operating. And natural gas produces about 50% of the carbon dioxide and just 10% the air pollutants that coal does.

Contrary to what many investors think, the biggest greenhouse gas reductions over the past 15 years haven’t come from increased solar and wind power, but from shifts away from coal and toward natural gas.

This week’s fun finds

EdgePoint shares the pitch with Insigne

To get warmed up for upcoming World Cup, we organized an internal “friendly” between EdgePointers. We happened to meet Toronto FC’s recent signing and Euro 2020 champion, Lorenzo “Il Magnifico" Insigne after the game. He graciously took a picture with us, possibly because he was impressed with the talent he saw displayed.   

Welcome to one of the newest Canucks

Congrats to Compliance team member Akhil becoming a Canadian citizen on Wednesday. We’re confident that he’ll keep his promise to faithfully observe the laws of Canada since his daily tasks include helping us follow the rules. 

Ranked: The Most and Least Livable Cities in 2022

This week's interesting finds

This week in charts

The growth in Canadian rentals

Differing inflation across eurozone countries makes monetary policy challenging for the ECB

Long-term CEO incentives (Twitter thread)

Waste Connections Inc. (TSX: WCN)

Alimentation Couche-Tard (TSX: ATD)

This week’s fun finds

Inside out

The Inside members of the Relationship Management team were able to find time between calls to get in some team building on the Toronto Islands.

The End of Manual Transmission

When it comes time to replace my current car, I probably won’t be able to get another like it. In 2000, more than 15 percent of new and used cars sold by the auto retailer CarMax came with stick shifts; by 2020, that figure had dropped to 2.4 percent. Among the hundreds of new car models for sale in the United States this year, only about 30 can be purchased with a manual transmission. Electric cars, which now account for more than 5 percent of car sales, don’t even have gearboxes. There are rumors that Mercedes-Benz plans to retire manuals entirely by the end of next year, all around the world, in a decision driven partly by electrification; Volkswagen is said to be dropping its own by 2030, and other brands are sure to follow. Stick shifts have long been a niche market in the U.S. Soon they’ll be extinct.

But the manual transmission’s chief appeal derives from the feeling it imparts to the driver: a sense, whether real or imagined, that he or she is in control. According to the business consultant turned motorcycle repairman turned best-selling author Matthew Crawford, attending to that sense is not just an affectation. Humans develop tools that assist in locomotion, such as domesticated horses and carriages and bicycles and cars—and then extend their awareness to those tools. The driver “becomes one” with the machine, as we say. In his 2020 book, Why We Drive, Crawford argues that a device becomes a prosthetic. The rider fuses with the horse. To move the tool is to move the self.

The decoupling of humans from their driving machines will accelerate in years to come. If the automatic transmission made the stick shift a monument to lost control, the autonomous (self-driving) vehicle aims to do the same for steering wheels. At that point, the loss will be so complete that it may not feel so alienating. Any pretense that the automobile is a prosthetic will be eliminated, so car passengers can move on to other things. Like people on a train, they might settle into a book or take a nap or open up an Excel spreadsheet.

The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class

I’m happy to finally share a thesis I’ve been chewing on for a little while. I call it The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class, which states: The higher you ascend the ladder of the Educated Gentry class, the more you become Michael Scott. 

(Spoiler warning)

Before You Fly The Nest: Advice for kids heading to college

• Explore, get outside your comfort zone, and experiment
• Seek balance
• Choose good friends
• Adopt good habits
• Avoid irreversible / catastrophic outcomes
• Don’t worry if it’s hard, especially at first

Hey, I know that guy: AI shows what the average Toronto man looks like

Someone very familiar with artificial intelligence asked a bot to show them what the average Torontonian looks like and then shared the results on Reddit.

According to AI, this is what an average dude in the city looks like:

This week's interesting finds

  

Wealthsimple valuation slashed nearly in half by largest shareholder, Power-controlled IGM

IGM Financial Inc., a subsidiary of Power Corp. of Canada, revealed in its second quarter financial statements released late Thursday that it had cut the valuation of its 24-per-cent stake in Wealthsimple to $492-million as of June 30, a 47-per-cent drop from its $925-million carrying value on March 31. IGM now carries its Wealthsimple stake at 42.6 per cent of its $1.153-billion valuation as of last Dec. 31.

In May, 2021, Wealthsimple became one of Canada’s most highly valued private technology companies when it raised $750-million at a $5-billion valuation. It was the second time in seven months that Wealthsimple had raised a nine-figure sum from private investors, as interest in its U.S. analog, Robinhood Markets, Inc., soared as millennials flocked to trading platforms to buy into meme stocks and cryptocurrencies.

Both have been hit by bad news this year. Robinhood this week said it would cut its head count by 23 per cent and revealed in its second quarter report it had experienced a drop in monthly active users and assets under custody. Robinhood previously cut 9 per cent of staff in April.

Meanwhile, Wealthsimple laid off 13 per cent of its work force in June. Wealthsimple CEO Mike Katchen said at the time clients were now “living through a period of market uncertainty they’ve never experienced before.” IGM’s statements Thursday suggest that uncertainty is weighing on Wealthsimple’s outlook and performance.

Unwanted debt from buyout boom stuck at investment banks

It is a dramatic shift from the start of the year, when banks were finalising debt for megadeals such as Advent International and Permira’s buyout of McAfee, worth more than $14bn, and Hellman & Friedman and Bain Capital’s $17bn purchase of Athenahealth. Even better, they were getting calls from buyout giants such as Blackstone, KKR and Carlyle as they plotted a $25bn carve-out of Sandoz from Novartis and soon would have a surprise deal, Elon Musk’s $44bn takeover of Twitter, to finance.

But then interest rates shot higher. Investors began to bet that the Federal Reserve would need to dramatically tighten policy to curb inflation, a move that sent bond prices tumbling, including the debt banks were holding on their own balance sheets to fund deals. In quick succession, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and lockdowns in China to slow the spread of Covid-19 hit markets, and investors began to prepare for recession.

Banks provide a critical function for the leveraged buyout industry, as buyout funds take companies private with a mixture of their investors’ own cash and a substantial portion of borrowed money that is raised from groups of lenders.

Wall Street lenders step in when a takeover is first struck, guaranteeing to provide loans, junk bonds and revolving credit facilities for the deal. But there is often a significant lag between when a deal is agreed and when it is consummated, as the companies must win shareholder backing if they are publicly traded and clear any regulatory hurdles.

The financing packages can be hugely lucrative but they carry sizeable risks if the market shifts from when banks and private equity groups initially set the terms of the debt packages. Those terms include the yield on the debt, covenants that will protect buyers and discounts banks can offer the funds and investors who will ultimately be the long-term holders of the bonds and loans.

If they are unable to sell the bonds at those terms, banks deepen the discounts, first eating into the profits they had hoped to earn on the deal. As the discounts rise, banks begin to pay for the difference out of their own pockets.

Airplane-Parts Shortage Threatens More Disruptions to Air Travel

“We’re finding it really hard to get our hands on parts,” said Steve Rossum, chief executive of Florida-based Silver Airways LLC, which flies primarily to Caribbean destinations.

Mr. Rossum said one or two of his airline’s roughly 20 planes have been grounded on any given day due to needing parts, often those related to air-conditioning. One plane was marooned for more than a week with a broken axle because it was difficult to get specialized tools, he said.

German airline Deutsche Lufthansa AG has had to ground some aircraft because of waits for various components that are taking longer to source, people familiar with the matter said. Whereas the airline group had previously been able to source missing items from within Europe, it has had to broaden the search for some parts across the globe, especially for rarer items such as panels for its cabin interiors, one of the people said.

Qatar Airways has been avoiding disruptions by taking the unusual, and expensive, step of keeping aircraft—including one of its eight Airbus A380 superjumbos—on standby in case planes can’t fly because of parts shortages, said CEO Akbar Al Baker.

Toronto rents soar 20% to record amid high demand, fewer listings

The pandemic led to a sharp increase last year in apartments listed as people left city centres. Now, as the COVID crisis eases, some of them are returning. Rising interest rates, meanwhile, will price many potential homebuyers out of the market and keep demand elevated for rental units.

“Expect rental market conditions to tighten further in the coming months,” Kevin Crigger, president of the real estate board, said in the statement.

Rents hit four-year lows last year as demand dried up and listings surged. The previous record for one-bedroom rents was $2,262, reached in the third quarter of 2019.

Record container ship traffic jam as backlog continues to build

Port congestion had finally looked like it was easing in May and early June. Ship queues had fallen back to double digits. There were 92 vessels waiting offshore as of June 10, led by 25 off Savannah, Georgia, 20 off Los Angeles/Long Beach, 18 off New York/New Jersey and 14 off Houston.

Then things turned for the worse. The tally rose to 125 on July 8, 136 on July 13 and 140 on July 19.

With the count now rising to 153, the North American container ship queue has increased in size by 66% over the past seven weeks.

Fun finds

EdgePoint anniversaries

Internal EdgePoint partners have a tradition of bringing in food or treats on their work anniversaries. A recent example was a Hot Ones - inspired hot sauce tasting challenge with nuggets and chips. The sauces were chosen more for flavour than heat because we like each other, but they definitely had some kick to them.

Nine EdgePointers started the gauntlet, with only two failing to make it to the end. The rest of the sauces went into the communal fridge to help spice up future meals.

The Disastrous Record of Celebrity Crypto Endorsements

Matt Damon started touting crypto investing when Bitcoin was worth twice as much as it is now. Mike Tyson’s NFTs have plunged more than 90% since he introduced his collection. And investors who allege they lost millions on a pump-and-dump scheme are suing Paul Pierce.

Months into a rout for crypto assets, the full extent of the financial pain suffered by millions of everyday Americans is still being calculated. What's clear, though, is that scores of celebrities touted the life-changing power of crypto investing at the worst possible time — just as the speculative mania was approaching its peak. The entreaties to get involved in the space came in multiple forms — everything from big-budget TV ads trumpeting particular exchanges to cryptic tweets touting obscure tokens.

Scarcity is an Ally of Appreciation 

I never really put much thought into time management when I was young.

Now I’m much more deliberate with how I spend my time, mostly out of necessity. Responsibilities tend to increase with age so juggling work, family, friends, health and hobbies is no easy feat.

No one has it all figured out when it comes to balancing out your time allocation but here are some thoughts from my experience:

• I’ve learned to love routine when it comes to time management. There’s still room for chaos and spontaneity on occasion especially when you have kids but it’s nice to have a regimen to fall back on for some stability in an unstable world.
• Downtime in middle age is harder to come by. When kids come along one of the biggest things that goes to the wayside is downtime.
• Spending money on time is a good investment. One of the unsung reasons a lot of people choose to work with a financial advisor is because they value their time.
• Trading too much time for money probably won’t pay off. The perfect amount of balance in life is probably unattainable but too much time spent chasing money typically isn’t a good investment.
• Scarcity can add meaning and clarity. Maybe knowing the time you have to spend with loved ones is fleeting can help you appreciate it even more while you have it.

People Spend Too Much Time On Decisions with Equally Satisfying Outcomes

Researchers found that people spent longer choosing between options that were roughly equal in value than between options in which there was a large value disparity.

“Value” here means how much participants said they would be willing to pay for each item at the start of the study.  

When shown a disfavored food alongside a favored food, people chose fast. When shown a favored food alongside another favored food, people took a while. But this is irrational (at least in the economic sense).

When making decisions, we spend too much time choosing between options with roughly equal utility.

This week's interesting finds

This week in charts

How families have changed over 50 years

A “lighter” argument for nuclear power

Howard Marks Memo - I beg to differ

“In 1978, I was asked to move to the bank’s bond department to start funds in convertible bonds and, shortly thereafter, high yield bonds.  Now I was investing in securities most fiduciaries considered “uninvestable” and which practically no one knew about, cared about, or deemed desirable ...and I was making money steadily and safely.  I quickly recognized that my strong performance resulted in large part from precisely that fact: I was investing in securities that practically no one knew about, cared about, or deemed desirable.  This brought home the key money-making lesson of the Efficient Market Hypothesis, which I had been introduced to at the University of Chicago Business School: If you seek superior investment results, you have to invest in things that others haven’t flocked to and caused to be fully valued.  In other words, you have to do something different.

“Investing strikes me as being very much like golf, where playing conditions and the performance of competitors can change from day to day, as can the placement of the holes.  On some days, one approach to the course is appropriate, but on other days, different tactics are called for.  To win, you have to either do a better job than others of selecting your approach or executing on it, or both.

“The same is true for investors.  It’s simple: If you hope to distinguish yourself in terms of performance, you have to depart from the pack.  But, having departed, the difference will only be positive if your choice of strategies and tactics is correct and/or you’re able to execute better.”

This week’s fun finds

EdgePointer of the month – July 2022

Geoff Goss

If you're going anywhere with Goss* on his home turf in Halifax, be sure to give yourself some extra time, as he seems to know the whole city. Goss is always ready to share a few words and his trademark grin with friends old and new. The secret to his success is simple – stories. Everyone seems to have a different favourite Goss story, while he seems to have an unlimited supply to tell. We're very fortunate that he's willing to share them during his annual "fireside chats" at our internal partners' meetings. 

Goss is the epitome of work hard, play hard – he's always a threat to start up a dancefloor with “the worm” or a chorus of Hallelujah that can inspire even the shyest singer to hit that secret chord. When he isn't helping to lead the Sales team or busting a move, Goss enjoys overseas cycling trips, sitting back and diving into a suspenseful non-fiction spy novel or playing a round of golf. Goss was the fourth person to join EdgePoint and his passion, both for the company and life, has influenced everyone who's had the fortune to work alongside him.

Prior to joining EdgePoint, he built the wholesaler team at Invesco and worked as a regional director at Brandes Investment Partners. He earned his B.Comm. in Marketing from Mount Allison University.

And a two-part bonus from Goss himself.

First, some of his favourite overseas bike trips:

• France (Provence) – Perfect for anyone who loves the challenge of a steep climb. Mont Ventoux is a personal favourite
• Spain (Mallorca, Sa Calobra) – From mountains to the oceans, Spain trails are incredibly fun
• Italy (Tuscany) – A chance to really appreciate the wineries by biking by them (and having a sip at the end of the day)
  

Second, some of his favourite non-fiction spy novels from Ben McIntyre that seem to be too good to be true:

Operation Mincemeat: A WWII British Deception Operation – The story of how a Spanish fisherman, British intelligence and a corpse with fake correspondence fooled German forces and helped the invasion of Italy

Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal – The story of Eddie Chapman, an England-born, but German-trained spy whose loyalty to the British Isles was proven multiple times during World War II

The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War – The story of two double agents working on opposite sides during the Cold War – a KGB agent working for MI6, while a CIA agent followed orders from the KGB

* Goss was willing to cede first name rights to Geoff Macdonald since they'd known each other from their PEI little league days (albeit on opposing teams).

Cut the meetings, make more friends

If you are both amazed and horrified by how many meetings are being crammed into our working days — you are not alone. Data from Microsoft research show that since the start of the pandemic, the number of meetings has risen by 50 per cent. It seems that our default on any task is to use that simple button to schedule a virtual meeting — and we are doing this multiple times a day.

As a psychologist who studies work, I could tell you that this highly scheduled way of working is likely to reduce your daily productivity. That’s because you are inadvertently squeezing out the time you need to be disconnected and alone. By doing so, you are limiting your capacity to focus undisturbed on more valuable tasks that require deeper concentration.

By doing so we are losing the opportunity to engage in an activity that can in the longer term bring profound value: the activity of building and sustaining friendships with others. By pressing that scheduling button for our next virtual meeting, we are taking away time from that messy, unpredictable business of making friends.

When we make friends, we strengthen our resilience. We are also making the time we spend at work more pleasurable. Take, for example, Gallup polling which puts “I have a best friend at work” as one of the best predictors of whether you will stay in your current job. This resonates with me.

The Power of Our New Pop Myths

The rise of what might be called “narrative universes,” like “Star Wars,” Marvel and “Harry Potter,” is usually explained in business terms, as a way for media companies to wring extra profits out of valuable pieces of intellectual property. Marvel films have grossed $22 billion at the box office, while the Star Wars franchise has grossed $11 billion and Harry Potter $9 billion, according to 2021 data from Comscore. And that’s before you start counting the toys, videogames and theme parks.

The interesting question, however, isn’t why media companies are so eager to keep supplying the market with new content from the same franchises. It’s why the demand is so insatiable. Why do audiences continue to flock to the 10th Star Wars movie or the 20th Marvel movie? What imaginative appetite or cultural need keeps us coming back for more?

Today’s narrative universes also resemble myths in bringing us face to face with fundamental mysteries of human life. Was I born for a purpose, and if so, how do I discover what it is? Why does evil exist? What am I willing to give my life for? Traditionally, people looked to religious and patriotic stories to answer such questions. In 21st-century America, those kinds of narratives no longer have the power to unite us; they are more likely to ignite suspicion and division. Popular culture has stepped into the gap, offering new myths that are less fraught and easier to share.

This week's interesting finds

EdgePoint Q2 2022 commentaries are now live on the website. This quarter:

• We have met the enemy, and it is us (equity) – Sydney Van Vierzen discusses why investors are the biggest risk to their own long-term returns
• Why I can’t sleep at night (fixed income) – Derek Skomorowski breaks down why he's so excited about today's fixed income opportunities
• Digging deeper (EdgePoint Go West Portfolio) – Frank Mullen talks about why you it’s important to invest in businesses, not just sectors. 

This week in charts

German opinion on nuclear energy by political affiliation 2021 vs. 2022

Family planning during the pandemic in China 

Shopify cancels fall internships, pauses recruiting for further roles amid fallen stock price

In a statement to The Globe and Mail on Friday, Shopify spokesperson Alex Lyons said the “fall internship program will continue with a reduced number of roles, which we have completed hiring for.” Mr. Lyons said Shopify is also evaluating other roles in a bid to focus on immediate initiatives to address the unwavering selloff that is battering the global technology sector.

Many tech companies have significantly scaled back their hiring plans and reduced staff in order to combat economic uncertainty stemming from inflation, rising interest rates, the war in Ukraine and a reversal of pandemic trends. Shopify now joins companies such as Twitter Inc., Coinbase Global Inc. and others that have yanked internship offers to address these global challenges.

Beyond Shopify’s internships, many new hires at the company had already been put in a state of limbo as they await their start date. A number of prospective employees, who were told they were going to be hired, have yet to receive written offers with salary figures apart from those discussed with Shopify recruiters.

Last week, Shopify said it is delaying an ambitious compensation overhaul that would give its employees more choice in how they’re paid. At least 50 people have been laid off since April, and dozens of permanent job offers have been delayed by Shopify while it adjusts that salary framework.

This week’s fun finds

Jack of All Trades, Master of Some

“Mario Kart is a zero-sum game, but real life isn't. In real life, skill development is very much a positive sum game.

“We aren't given 100 'skill points' at birth, that must be distributed across offsetting sliding scales. There is no limit to how many skills you can improve and master, and improvement in one field doesn't necessitate deterioration in another field.

“In fact, skills build on each other. Honing multiple skills is actually a positive sum game, where 1+1 = 3.”

Danish race fans

Two EdgePointers, Diane and Nataliya, were in Copenhagen at the same time the Tour de France started, and they were able to snag a few photos of the race: