(An audio version of this letter can be found as Episode 67 of The Unlimited Podcast by Ginsler Wealth. Use the link provided or find us on your favourite podcast app: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / YouTube)

 

Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth.
– Mike Tyson

To Ginsler Wealth’s Clients:

If you grew up in the 1980s like me, and had an original Nintendo gaming system, you probably recognize this string of numbers: 007 373 5963. If seeing those numbers gives you flashbacks to being punched in the mouth, read on…

And if you have no idea what the heck I’m talking about, read on as well.

In the mid-1980s, Mike Tyson exploded onto the boxing scene with a ferocious, crowd-captivating style, rapidly becoming the youngest heavyweight champion in history while dispatching opponents—often in the first round—with unprecedented speed and power. His aura of invincibility and mainstream appeal made him a cultural phenomenon, extending beyond sports into global celebrity. By 1987, his dominance and popularity were cemented in pop culture with the release of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, bringing his intimidating presence into millions of homes.

My autographed photo of Mike Tyson’s Punch Out.

My home was one of them. Like most of my 11- and 12-year-old friends, I played Punch-Out religiously. In the game, you had to defeat a ladder of increasingly difficult fighters before reaching Tyson at the top:

Glass Joe → Von Kaiser → Piston Honda → Don Flamenco → King Hippo → Great Tiger → Bald Bull → Soda Popinski → Mr. Sandman → Super Macho Man → Mike Tyson

It wasn’t easy and took a ton of time, and that was if you could make it through.

And then rumours started circling around the rough and tough school yard at Associated Hebrew Day School: there was a secret code you could enter when the game powered on that would get you right to Tyson! 007 373 5963.

I must have fought Tyson a hundred times. First, lasting less than 5 seconds, but eventually beating the greatest boxer in the world. It turns out that when you can play out being punched in the mouth over and over, you can learn how to anticipate it, accept it, manage through it, or avoid it.

Tyson’s quote was trash talk directed at his opponents. Every fighter stepped into that ring with a strategy, a game plan, and a team of coaches who had studied his every move. Then Tyson threw a punch. Plan over.

But here’s the more interesting question: what about Tyson himself when he was the one getting punched in the mouth? Because he did get punched in the mouth. Literally. And his answer to that question is actually what this letter is about. He knew it was coming, he accepted it, he anticipated it, he tried to avoid it, and he managed through it. In short, he had a plan for being punched in the mouth — in his job.

And so do I — in mine.

KNOW IT: 2026 STARTED WITH A BANG

My first day back after the holidays began with a bad snowstorm. But having been away for a few weeks, I was eager to get into the office and start the new year with a bang. Little did I know that was exactly what was going to happen.

As I sat stopped at the last stoplight before reaching my office, I saw in my rearview mirror a car approaching quickly and ultimately sliding into the back of my car.

I pulled over on the side street, spoke to the perpetrator, got a picture of his license plate, drivers license and insurance, shook his hand (he didn’t mean to do it of course) and was at my office 2 minutes later.

My previous experience with minor fender-benders (all not my fault, of course), meant that I was able to handle what might otherwise have been an unnerving situation with calm, efficiency, and care.

(Admittedly, when I got the call from my daughter after just getting her license that she was rear-ended while at a stoplight – that was certainly a punch in the mouth.)

Similarly, the start of 2026 has felt unnerving and unprecedented for many investors. Trump’s surprise capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and recent and ongoing war with Iran were both unpredictable events. Plus, the relentless AI narrative feels as if the world is changing daily right before our eyes. How can an investor manage when things are different this time?

Well, they are not. We only have to look back to the same period last year to see similar market reactions to Trump’s tariffs and other unsettling or unpredictable world events. The chart below shows the performance of U.S. and Canadian equity markets this past quarter relative to their respective performance in the first quarter of 2025. The lines and ending points look eerily similar.

I am not suggesting that the rest of 2026 will turn out the same as 2025 (remember, I don’t have a crystal ball). But as investors, we know that the world is always unnerving and unpredictable. Knowing what he was getting into, I doubt when Buster Douglas entered the ring with Mike Tyson in February 1990, he thought to himself: “This is going to be easy.” And this was likely especially the case when Tyson knocked him down in the 8^th round. But looking back after he defeated Tyson by KO in the 10^th round in one of the biggest upsets in sports history, I’m sure things looked great in the rearview mirror.

As I’ve repeated too often (including my last quarterly letter about why wealth is hard), over the long-term, markets have always gone up. But investors have to be ready for many punches, jabs, hooks, and a few knockouts. It’s only when you look back over a long time period (or make it through 10 rounds of fighting!) that you realize you’ve won.

ANTICIPATE IT

Tyson undoubtedly had a plan for being punched in the mouth because he undoubtedly anticipated that might happen. Similarly, when we perform due diligence on any investment strategy, we must do so with the anticipation that something could go wrong with the strategy itself or external factors that could lead to problems.

Currently, private real estate and private credit funds around the world are facing a wave of redemption requests. But because the underlying assets are less liquid (it’s hard to sell a building in a day), even some of the world’s largest investment firms—like Blackstone, BlackRock, Apollo, and Blue Owl—are limiting withdrawals (the industry calls this “gating”). The issue isn’t necessarily collapsing fundamentals of the
underlying assets, but a mismatch: investors want liquidity at the same time, and the psychology of “gating” can actually accelerate redemption requests.

A few of the “private” strategies we utilize have also been caught up in this acceleration of redemption requests. While no one likes to be told they can’t get their funds immediately, the reality is that in the absence of this “gating” situation, we wouldn’t have been looking to redeem anyway.

Our initial and ongoing diligence gives us comfort that the underlying assets are strong. For example, the private real estate funds we are in own hundreds of apartment buildings across Canada (and some in the U.S.) that are close to fully occupied, with tenants paying rent and investors continuing to receive distributions each month.

In all instances, we are in direct and regular communication with the CEOs of these firms. Each has a plan to increase liquidity for investors. Anticipating that a problem could always arise, ensuring any holding is never an outsized portion of a client’s portfolio, and really understanding the underlying assets, gives us comfort to expect this situation to eventually resolve as and when investors see some liquidity flowing their way.

(TRY TO) AVOID IT BY “CHASING CHICKENS”

In Rocky II, Rocky’s trainer Mickey tells him that to build his speed, he needs to “chase the chicken”, and if he can “catch this thing, you can catch greased lighting”.

While Rocky replies, “I’m a fighter, I ain’t a farmer,” this past quarter, after about six months of diligence, we have turned to the farmers (and their chickens) to help our clients avoid some of the punches that the more traditional investment markets will inevitably throw at their portfolios.

More specifically, we have started to allocate to a fund that lends money to Canadian farmers.[i] As Robb Nelson, CEO of Farm Lending Canada, said during our recent podcast discussion, farmers are the best borrowers because their farms have been in their families for generations, they sit on a street that is likely named after the family itself, and they will do everything in their power not to lose the farm.[ii] Perhaps it is no surprise, therefore, that Robb’s farm lending fund has never lost a penny of principal or interest in its history.[iii]

While Rocky tells Mickey that he feels like “a Kentucky Fried Idiot” chasing the chicken, we are always extremely excited to find truly uncorrelated (or less correlated) investment strategies to add to client portfolios.

MANAGE THROUGH IT

Once you are in the ring, you have to rely on your preparation to manage through. And sometimes it is clear that forces around you are changing and require adapting or embracing on the fly.

One of those relentless forces right now is AI. I have written about our focus on AI repeatedly. Our first AI-related podcast was back in January 2023 (centuries ago in “AI terms”), after we had already started investing in the space.[iv] Our approach with any new or important transformation is to learn and understand as much as possible – to help us determine what it means for our clients, their portfolios, and our business. We have certainly done this with AI.

This past quarter, I had the opportunity to visit NVIDIA’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California and hear directly from some its most senior leaders about what’s happening in AI – and the relentless demand for its use, limited only by the world’s supply of power. The message coming out of that NVIDIA visit was hard-hitting: according to NVIDIA’s CEO, Jenson Huang: “there will be a billion times more tokens generated in 5 years”[v]. (FYI: Tokens are units of data – like words – that AI processes and generates).

And I strongly believe we are ahead of the curve relative to most companies, and certainly most in our industry. Perhaps that is why the organizers of Future Proof Citywide – a large-scale conference held in Miami Beach dedicated exclusively to AI’s impact on wealth and investment management – asked me to speak about Ginsler Wealth’s implementation of AI, and in particular ginsler.ai, my AI clone. We continue to experiment with AI inside our firm with the goal of improving operations, efficiency, and speed for the benefit of our clients.

AI elicits both excitement and fear. In February, “a piece of AI science fiction rocked the stock market”[vi]. Using one of my favourite phrases, Derek Thompson’s “Nobody Knows Anything” article serves to calm down the fear. And my friend and Harvard Business School classmate, Myoung Cha (formerly Head, Apple Health Strategic Initiatives) explains why – yes – AI will likely eliminate some narrow, task-based jobs, but…by making cognitive work dramatically cheaper, it will also expand demand for that work, often creating more total activity, not less.

Since AI can now code everything (I’ve personally now coded one game, two apps, and multiple reporting dashboards), one would naturally think coding jobs would be eliminated swiftly. But the exact opposite is happening:

In other words, the future of work isn’t fewer jobs—it’s different jobs, with humans shifting from doing the work to directing, judging, and expanding it.

Whether you view AI with excitement or fear — or some combination of both — the right response isn’t to freeze. It’s to prepare, adapt, and keep moving forward. Which, come to think of it, is probably exactly how Buster Douglas approached getting into the ring with Tyson.

—————–

And by the way — remember the question I asked at the top? What does Tyson do when he’s the one getting punched in the mouth?

Here’s his answer, in his own words, about that fight with Buster Douglas:

That’s one of my best…because I took some [expletive] shots. Nobody would’a took them shots.
Boxing is like this game of life.
Suppose I let that discourage me.
Imagine if I said, ‘man, maybe I should give it up. Maybe I don’t got the heart for this no more.’
I would never do that.
Suppose I did that instead of saying ‘Man, that’s nothing. I’ll be champ in 6 months.’

And eventually he was. Twice.

Even getting knocked out by a 12-year-old Brian Ginsler couldn’t stop Mike. And we won’t stop fighting – or at least working really hard – for our clients either. No matter what punches get thrown our way.

Thank you for your continued trust, support, and confidence. We are available 24/7 should you need us.

Sincerely,

Brian Ginsler
President & CEO

 

 

 

 

 

[i] As usual, any allocation is made taking into account each client’s individual goals, objectives and risk tolerance. So any particular investment may not be appropriate or suitable for certain clients.

[ii] This is a summary of some of Robb’s main points. The full podcast with related content can be found at: https://ginslerwealth.com/farm-lending-with-robb-nelson-on-the-unlimited-podcast/

[iii] According to Robb Nelson and Farm Lending Canada.

[iv] This initial investment was in an AI-focused venture capital fund, and therefore was only suitable for certain clients.

[v] Source: Presentation by Justin Hodgson. Head of AI Factories, NVIDIA. February 2026.

[vi] Derek Thompson. Nobody Knows Anything. https://www.derekthompson.org/p/nobody-knows-anything

[vii] Source: Citadel Securities, Indeed. Sourced from: https://be-curious-not-judgmental.com/2026/02/28/the-jevons-paradox-of-ai-what-programmers-and-medical-scribes-reveal-about-the-future-of-work/

(An audio version of this letter can be found as Episode 63 of The Unlimited Podcast by Ginsler Wealth. Use the link provided or find us on your favourite podcast app: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / YouTube)

 

To Ginsler Wealth’s Clients:

Back in my investment banking days, I spent a great deal of time working on prospectuses for companies going public or raising additional capital in the public markets. One principle governed that work above all others: “full, true, and plain disclosure,” the standard for communicating clearly with investors.

So when I mentioned in my last quarterly letter that our firm’s main colours are black and yellow because I am partially colourblind, that was “true” and “plain” disclosure — but admittedly, not “full” disclosure.

While no regulator or investor is looking for further disclosure on our firm’s colour palette, here is the full story:

In 1986, I arrived in Algonquin Park for my first summer as a camper at Camp Arowhon, where my uncle Elly was the camp director. Every morning after breakfast in the Main Lodge, with the entire camp gathered together, my uncle would begin the day’s announcements the same way.

“Good morning campers.” And the entire camp, in unison, would respond: “Good morning uncle Ellyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” the “eeee” rising higher and higher until everyone ran out of breath.

At nine years old, on my very first morning at camp, I felt like a real big shot — because uncle Elly was actually my Uncle Elly. (And by the way, Uncle Elly was also partially colourblind.)

And every morning at breakfast, Uncle Elly and many of the campers and staff would wear their iconic golden yellow Camp Arowhon sweatshirts. The same “Arowhon Yellow”[i] painted on every canoe I paddled for hours each day as I trained to become a 1^st Class Canoeist and eventual canoe instructor; the same Arowhon Yellow canoes that rest at my favourite place on earth – Arowhon’s canoe dock – that I stare at every day on the large photograph that hangs on the wall directly across from my office desk.

I still have just one of those yellow sweatshirts — carefully stored and protected, the way you’d safeguard something irreplaceable.

And so, when it came time to brand Ginsler Wealth, it felt natural — beyond the fact that black and yellow work well for both mine and my Uncle Elly’s eyes — to choose a colour introduced to me through him, and one that has long been a reminder of what results from discipline, perseverance, and hard work.

So, when Uncle Elly passed away this past September, having pictured him in his yellow Camp Arowhon sweatshirts for all these years, I was surprised — as executor of his estate — to find no evidence of any Arowhon Yellow in his closet. I suppose they are disappearing gems; just like him.

True, plain, and now full, disclosure.

WEALTH IS HARD

Fast forward to the middle of this past quarter — the fourth quarter of 2025 — and I’m on a plane headed to Montreal to see one of our multi-family office clients. At Ginsler Wealth, we work with families holistically, across both investment management and the broader world of wealth management — everything that isn’t just investing. For some families, that means being deeply embedded in their financial lives, coordinating and overseeing virtually everything on a day-to-day basis. This is what we refer to as family office services.

As I settled into my seat, waiting for the plane to take off, I pulled up the latest product reveal presentation by Wealthsimple’s CEO, Michael Katchen. He’s been doing these “Steve Jobs-like” launches a few times a year now, as his firm — a genuinely impressive one — continues to roll out new banking and investing features at low or no cost for millions of Canadians.

As his announcements unfolded, my mind drifted to what we had been doing for families over the past quarter and year…

I had personally been acting as executor for Uncle Elly’s estate, with my team assisting — a complex, time-consuming responsibility that few people are prepared for when they’re suddenly thrust into it. We had also experienced the passing of one of our dear clients and were helping her children navigate the same kinds of complications. At the same time, we were supporting several families going through divorces, particularly spouses who had never been responsible for managing the family’s finances. These are not moments when wealth feels simple.

One of those spouses texted me this past quarter:

“I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your help and support. When I say I would have been lost without you, I mean it. Knowing you were – and are – looking out for me – made all the difference. It allowed me to breathe and make an excruciating situation a little easier. You went so beyond the call of duty. I am very well aware of that. And I will never forget that.”

(The quote shown is from a current client. No compensation was provided. We are not aware of any material conflicts of interest. [ii])

There are many more examples like these — too many to list here.

Back on the plane, now taxiing toward the runway, it finally clicked. Watching a firm brilliantly promote how simple wealth can be for many Canadians, while thinking about the real-world complexity we were helping families manage every day, I thought to myself: Wealthsimple? No…Wealthhard. And as the plane lifted off the ground, I clicked “buy” and secured the wealthhard.com domain name.

See me explain the whole story on video here.

 

To be clear, none of this detracts from the remarkable work Wealthsimple is doing to democratize banking and investing in Canada. They are a great solution for most Canadians; just not for the families we serve.

Wealthhard is our way of naming a reality we see every day. It’s a micro-brand that highlights our family office services — work many of you already experience in part, and some of you experience in full — and a recognition that as success grows, wealth rarely gets simpler. It gets harder.

 

THE INTERVIEWER BECOMES THE INTERVIEWEE

The Wealthhard site also features several clips from a recent (video) interview I did with Ira Gluskin on The Unlimited Podcast. I’m usually the one asking the questions, but this time the roles were reversed. Ira pressed me on my path through the investment and wealth management industries, my years at Gluskin Sheff, and the founding of Ginsler Wealth and the services we provide today. Having run his own family office alongside his partner Gerry Sheff, Ira has a deep appreciation for the family office model — and, as always, he brings his own thoughtful colour commentary to the conversation.

THE WEALTHHARD GAME

Just for fun — and to illustrate why wealth (and investing) is hard — I experimented with “vibe-coding” (a term I never expected to apply to myself) and built a simple wealth management game using various AI tools. Conceiving, coding, and publishing a fully functioning web game in just a few weeks was a mind-blowing experience, and a strong validation of the excitement surrounding AI right now (hint: I don’t think it’s hype).

While fun, I did this deliberately to ensure that our team at Ginsler Wealth continues to learn how to use the tools of the future. I’m not aware of any wealth management firm that has ever coded and released an online game — but then again, we’ve never been particularly interested in doing things the way everyone else does.

Test your investing skill and see if you can make the leaderboard. You might discover that investing is much easier with hindsight.

INVESTING IS EASY

I can’t write a year-end letter without addressing the investing environment and how we’ve been positioning portfolios.

As the Wealthhard game illustrates, investing is easy when viewed in hindsight (you’ll see what I mean when you try the game), and 2025 highlighted again that if you just held the leading technology companies – or the U.S. market more broadly – and didn’t flinch when…

• trade wars and tariff threats resurfaced,
• markets sold off on fears of slowing growth,
• inflation data surprised to the upside,
• interest rates stayed “higher for longer,”
• AI valuations were repeatedly called a bubble,
• geopolitical conflicts escalated,
• tech stocks experienced sharp pullbacks,
• headlines warned of recessions, corrections, or crashes,
• investors rotated out of risk assets, and
• sentiment swung from euphoria to fear (and back again) …

…you would have experienced strong results in 2025.

Of course, we know many investors did flinch (particularly around President Trump’s “Liberation Day” in March/April) because investing is easy in hindsight, but very difficult in real time.

Against that backdrop, and both leading into and throughout 2025, we made several deliberate portfolio adjustments. We increased exposure to international and emerging markets; added new Canadian and U.S. equity mandates with a greater “value” orientation; introduced a new quantitative fixed-income strategy; and continued allocating to an alternative options-income strategy. For various reasons, we also fully exited at least two of the strategies we had been allocating to for years. For certain clients, where appropriate, we invested in three venture capital funds focused on either AI, Israeli technology, or both.

As in most years, some core holdings performed very well, while others — particularly some of the value-oriented equity managers — lagged on a relative basis (though all remained positive). We like to remind both ourselves and our clients that if all holdings in your portfolios are moving up at the same time, they can do the same in the other direction. Consistent with that philosophy, as 2025 came to a close — and as we continue into early 2026 — we have been adding to several of the recently underperforming strategies. If and when broader markets and growth-oriented stocks falter, we expect these diversifying strategies to play a more important role.[iii]

That work sits alongside our ongoing effort to identify additional high-quality, durable, and less-correlated investments to add to our lineup. We are close on a few, but as always, our due diligence continues.

As we enter 2026 (and like all previous years that came before it), nobody knows what the future holds (or as Barry Ritholtz put it on The Unlimited Podcast in October: “Nobody knows anything.”), which is precisely why our approach has always been to stay diversified, disciplined, and humble about what markets will do next, because investing is only easy in hindsight.

———————————–

Looking back, becoming a camper at Uncle Elly’s camp did more than give me great memories — it shaped how I think about mastery. Learning to become a 1^st Class Canoeist in those unmistakable Arowhon Yellow canoes required discipline, hard work, and serious focus and commitment. There were no shortcuts. And it wasn’t simple or easy. Years later, I see the same lessons reflected in our work at Ginsler Wealth. Managing investments is hard in real time. Managing wealth — across families, life events, and generations — is even harder. Both demand clarity, organization, and the ability to remain disciplined when outcomes are uncertain.

So as we welcome 2026, I’ll wish you an easy year ahead, and assure you we will do our best to make your wealth management needs a little less hard.

 

The view from my desk: Kandy Gallery. Neil Dankoff’s Vintage Boathouse. Canoe dock, Camp Arowhon in Algonquin Park, Ontario.

 

Perhaps that brings us back to where this letter began. I’ve always known that colour as “Arowhon Yellow”; my team now calls it Ginsler Wealth Yellow — and I like the sound of that. Thank you for your continued trust, support, and confidence. We are available 24/7 should you need us.

Sincerely,

Brian Ginsler
President & CEO

 

[i] The colour is actually not a custom or proprietary Camp Arowhon colour. According to Joanne Kates, owner and former Director of Camp Arowhon, “It was called Alaska Gold, and from an ordinary paint company.” And the “Ginsler Wealth Yellow” is an approximation and not precisely either Alaska Gold nor “Arowhon Yellow”.

[ii] As a Registered Investment Advisor regulated by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) we are required to include prominent disclaimers directly alongside any testimonial or endorsement.

[iii] Of course, investing involves significant uncertainty and nothing detailed herein should be deemed any guarantee of future performance.