Enforced spritz consumption
Silly season. Four day work weeks. Heat. Insurance. Mustard Skittles. Aliens. Super-conduction. Pool-side chats. Skepticism.
Hi there!
We talked last week about the UK’s ‘silly season’ and how in France, August traditionally heralds the shut-down of literally everything useful everywhere. Well, August is now fully upon us - and true to form - news is drying up, financiers are retreating to local and international harbours in search of the ‘boating lifestyle’ and the air-con is turned ON, baby!
So with that in mind, this is the last Small Business dispatch from us until September, as we, ourselves, seek out some spritz-laden, sweaty-summer solace. Unless something crazy happens that is - in which case we’ll be back (temporarily) from our hopeful hiatus. It’s been quite a year so far…so really anything is possible.
⛱️ Today in pool-side chat…
The four day work week, scourge of the traditionally-minded business, is back, back, back - and the numbers are looking goooood. Sick days have dropped, revenues have remained steady, people were generally happier and - and this keeps happening for some reason - the majority of those businesses trialling it out have decided to keep it going. Maybe it’s time we collectively had a go of it.
A daily reminder that the Credit Score industry is not working on your behalf. Credit agencies are not the best at ‘data accuracy’, and with little at risk to them when they get it wrong, this is the perfect month to double check what (mis)information these agencies are spraying out into the world on your behalf through their dubious, unregulated, judgemental hosepipes.
The Canadian economy expanded again in May by 0.3% - despite severe wildfires shrinking the energy sector by 2.1% (the largest decline since 2020). We can thank the service sector for pulling our collective asses out the recessionary hell-fires. Make sure to tip your server appropriately.
🍹 Meanwhile at the nearby all-you-can-eat bar and grill…
National Bank has acquired Silicon Valley Bank’s $1B Canadian portfolio, “subject to approval”. Avion rewards is flying beyond RBC - while Air Miles is still in a nose-dive. Spend your points now and go somewhere nice. Climate woes and ‘heat-death’ will massively impact migration within North America - while Florida faces an uninsured future of its own making. Facebook might be undermining democracy - we’re not sure though, because the research was funded by Facebook. Ladies and Gentlemen…Mustard Skittles. People would rather be electrically shocked than spend time alone with their thoughts - which is fair enough. It’s been a tough few years. “We could be legends, man” - a life lesson in when to go for it, and when to just admit defeat (despite what your new marketing hire is pushing for). Pee-wee passes. How to tell your kids about the aliens. Twitter vs X vs WeChat. AI’s Oppenheimer moment has arrived - or something. Nevertheless, if it has arrived, it’s done so with the most useless data visualization known to mankind. Oh, and if you’re headed to Italy after cashing in those remaining Air Miles, “Attenzione, Pickpocket!”
Go take a holiday. That’s an order. You deserve it.
🌴 Bonnes vacances!
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The Data Room 🤖
The Data Room is ready to give you the engrossing science-heavy holiday read you probably didn’t ask for.
Set phasers to…‘probably not’
The past week has been a wild one for science news - and the common thread seems to be…scepticism.
Material scientists in Korea have potentially created a room-temperature semiconductor that would change the way the world works. There’s a mad-dash to replicate the finding, and, typical of how the internet works, it’s currently being led by a Soviet backyard scientist with an anime profile picture who streams video games on their off-time. For real though, here’s a link to a collection of various attempts to replicate LK-99 from around the world, and if any of these pan out then consider our world changed. Then we of course had the UFO hearings in the US. We’re going to be hearing about this one for a long time.
So back to the scepticism –aside from just making sure these reports have a vein of truth to them, we’re all so inundated with scientific breakthroughs that get reported on then never seem to see the light of day. How many articles have you read about clean energy breakthroughs that produce 100x more output than our current solar panels, or revolutionary new cancer cures, water desalination, and so on, all without ever seeing their full potential because they end up not being scalable. How often do major cutting edge technologies end up being used for practical applications? Let’s talk about that.
Statistics Canada just put out a report that covers the adoption rate of what they would consider “advanced technologies” through various sectors (mainly professional, scientific and technical services, utilities, finance and insurance, and manufacturing) with a survey size of about 170,000 enterprises. They found that as of 2022, 62% of represented organizations are using at least one kind of advanced technology. You know how a few years back your cousin was trying to convince you that blockchain was going to turn the world on its head and that it’s going to be so commonplace that every piece of fruit in the grocery store will be tracked and traced? Turns out Blockchain has a 0.7% adoption rate.
The more commonplace tech are (somewhat disappointingly) all the ones you’d expect: design and information control (35%), clean tech (33%), business intelligence (27%), along with my least favourite category from every survey ever “Other” –here they called it additional advanced technologies– (27%).Surprisingly, even though we’re hearing about it every day, and seemingly every business has it listed as a core competency, AI only shows up in 3% of organizations. More bad news for Meta –other than threads losing half its users– VR and AR are only seeing an uptake of 1%. Common Zuckerberg L.
So what are the major roadblocks to all this advanced technology at our doorstep? 51% of companies with these shiny new toys have a major problem with recruiting. Integrating the new stuff with the old stuff is also a (39%) major problem, here’s your chance to finally develop that AI integrated fax machine you’ve been dreaming of.In the end, the survey illustrates the harsh realities of why it takes so long for futuristic tech to go from a dramatic news story to the business world: it’s expensive and risky. 40% of the most tech-infused Canadian companies claim that it’s a long road to receive a return on their investment, and an additional 40% have trouble determining how valuable these new technologies will actually end up being.
There are lots of reasons for CTOs and CIOs to favour scepticism when it comes to new moonshot developments. After all, it takes a real visionary to put together a product that can fuse the latest tech with customer demand, but every once in a while we thankfully get something as revolutionary as the air purifying headphones.
Market at-a-glance 📈
BOC Indicators (Link):
BOC Prime Rate: 7.20%
BOC Unemployment Rate: 5.4%
BOC CPI Inflation Rate: 3.4%
BOC $USD Exchange Rate (Link):
Low: 1.3177 CAD [0.7589 USD]
Average: 1.3203 CAD [0.7574 USD]
High: 1.3232 CAD [0.7557 USD]
Best GIC Rates (Link):
1-year GIC: 5.60%
3-year GIC: 5.35%
5-year GIC: 5.10%
Best 5Y Mortgage Rates (Link):
Variable: 5.90%
Fixed: 5.09%
Prime Rates (Link):
TD Bank: 7.20%
BMO: 7.20%
RBC: 7.20%
Scotiabank: 7.20%
CIBC: 7.20%
National Bank: 7.20%
CRA Canadian Pension Plan Rate: 5.95%
CRA Employment Insurance Rate: 1.63%
CRA Minimum Wage per Province: Link