E70: Second Quarter Letter 2026 Client Letter - Anniversary Edition

This podcast is brought to you by Ginsler Wealth. The information discussed today is meant to be general in nature and not tailored to your specific investing circumstances. This means that you should talk to your regular Ginsler Wealth advisor or your own advisor before acting on any information we discuss today. Nothing in this podcast is intended to be a solicitation, and past performance does not guarantee future returns. It is July 1st and the summer is is officially here, so no time to waste on long disclaimers. Today on The Unlimited Podcast, I read my 2026 second quarter client letter. It's our firm's 5th anniversary, so let me tell you what we've done in the past 5 years and what we're doing now. Let's go! Hey everybody, welcome to Happy Canada Day, by the way, July 1st. If you're listening to this on the day that it is released, the summer is here and I'm going to read my second quarter 2026 client letter so you can hear what's going on. And here we go. To Ginsler Wealth's clients. If you have been reading my letters consistently, you may recall back in Q3 2025, I mentioned that we were taking steps to become a U.S. registered investment advisor with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC. We spent considerable time and money to do so, and in November of last year, we were granted such registration. Once the license was in hand, we spent a meaningful part of the first half of 2026 ensuring all US compliance requirements were in place, essentially running two compliance functions and defaulting to the more restrictive policy of each country. Our operations team dove deep into learning new US systems and learning about all the various US account types and their nuances. Finally, our investment team spent countless hours evaluating the entire universe of investment options in the US and with the significant assistance of powerful AI tools, conducted what I'm calling next-level manager and investment research, correlation analysis, and vast Monte Carlo simulations. You can see the definition of that online if you get the letter there, ginslerwealth.com, with the goal of offering a spectacular investment portfolio offering for US clients. And during this past quarter, I killed it all, shut it down, and gave up our US registration. Happy anniversary. The end of this past quarter marks the 5-year anniversary of the official launch of Ginsler Wealth, which is the anniversary of being granted our Canadian license from the Ontario Securities Commission. I guess I should call it our Ontario license, but you get the point. Unlike other advisors who quote unquote move a book of business from one bank or firm to another, Ginsler Wealth officially started with $0.00 of assets under management. We earned our first monthly AUM, assets under management, fee of a whopping $165.03 in August 2021. Since that time, we have grown to help a select group of approximately 100 Canadian families from across the country, some as their full personal CFO, also called quote unquote family office, where we look after any and all aspects of their financial lives. And in brackets I say because hashtag wealth hard, the link to wealth hard, don't forget wealth hard. And the majority where we manage some or all of their investable assets while also helping with wealth and financial planning matters. I am particularly proud that in 5 years we have generated almost $70 million of investment gains for our collective client base. I also have a wonderful team of professionals who work tirelessly for you with a genuine desire to make your life easier, usually specific to finance, wealth, and investing, but often in other areas as well. And our significant adoption of AI, which I believe is ahead of others in our industry, empowers this team to do even more for you. And I have in brackets here, if you want a brief glimpse into our use of tech and AI, see this clip from my presentation, A View Inside a Tech-Enabled Wealth Firm, to other investment firms at the 2026 Digit Client Forum this past May. And this clip obviously can be found online if you're reading this at ginslerwealth.com. Uh, you can't click this clip just by listening to me say that multiple times. Sorry. Because we place client service above all other priorities, if there's one area where I've spent little time in the last 5 years, it is on active business development or quote unquote sales. But what I realized and what I instill in my team is that if we do the best job possible for you and treat your other advisor team, like your accountants and lawyers, etc., similarly, you just might tell your friends about us. And that is exactly what has driven the growth of our firm. So please accept my heartfelt thanks for your kind referrals and introductions. And if you ever come across someone who could use the kind of help we provide, I hope you'll think of us again. So if you're still wondering why I shut down our US license, I suppose the simplest answer is it's all your fault. You, our existing Canadian clients. At the beginning of my first client letter, there's a link to it in the, uh, on the website if you're reading it there. At the beginning of my first client letter, I wrote the following. I didn't put my name on the door so I could see my name in lights. I put my name on the door because it ensures that I never forget that I am personally accountable to you. And at the end of that very same letter, I wrote, I take the responsibility of caring for your wealth seriously, and I am unrelentingly dedicated to your success. That is my promise to you. My name is on the door. So when I saw the time, energy, and talent our team was dedicating to building a potential future US business, I realized something important. That same time, energy, and talent belonged here with you. Not because the US opportunity was unattractive. It was attractive, maybe very attractive. But the more we pursued it, the clearer it became that the best use of our next chapter was not to become a broader firm serving more markets. It was to become an even better firm serving the people and families who already placed their trust in us. After all, I promised I would. The next 5 years. Similar to how I started this letter, those that are consistent readers will also know that I have a tendency to remind you that I don't have a crystal ball and quote, it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future, end quote, in the immortal words of Yogi Berra. That is especially true today. The way we deliver wealth management and conduct investment research, planning, reporting, and client service will almost certainly look different 5 years from now. When we do imagine the future of serving you, AI runs through it all. But AI is changing so fast, improving, surprising us, and occasionally humbling us almost by the day, that I won't pretend to know exactly what our firm will look like or how we'll work 5 years from now. What I can tell you is that we intend to stay on the leading edge of it, the way we've tried to be from the start. So rather than predict what we'll look like in the next 5 years, let me tell you what you might expect from us as it relates to your investments in the next 5 months or so. Portfolio changes, adjustments, deletions, and additions. We have refocused our full efforts around correlation analysis and other analysis using both AI and RI, that's real intelligence, to our Canadian portfolios. Our collective investment team has identified what we believe to be ways to further optimize your current portfolios and have already begun taking steps to implement these changes. These changes, always done with each client's specific goals, objectives, and risk tolerances in mind, may include redistributing assets among your current strategies by adjusting their weights, selling certain holdings entirely and redistributing the proceeds, and introducing new investment strategies to your portfolios. The above is a multi-month process as it cannot occur at the snap of a finger. Our team has a detailed implementation plan that is being followed to thoroughly review each client account and prudently make changes if applicable. What's new? A few of the new strategies we're implementing and/or reviewing in detail for potential inclusion in our client portfolios include: US Top 20 Companies. This one's not really new, but we maintain our thesis on investing in the biggest and best companies in the US. That's the largest 20 S&P 500 companies, and are increasing allocations in many portfolios. Notably absent from the S&P 500, quote, top 20 list is recently IPO'd SpaceX. We are considering a market-weight allocation to SpaceX in client portfolios, but continue to watch its financial and share price performance post-IPO prior to finalizing our decision. In short, we're happy to let this one orbit a while before we commit. Global small capitalization equity strategy. We are looking to broaden our equity portfolios with a legendary value manager's global small cap fund. Small cap being small capitalization. Unlike Canadian-focused small cap strategies, which often have to choose from very small, relatively illiquid companies, the small cap definition outside of Canada can extend to companies with market capitalizations as large as US $7.5 billion. And thereby allows for meaningful diversification with far fewer potential liquidity issues. The fund under review has an approximate 13% 10-year annualized return track record and is a likely inclusion in client portfolios in Q3 following completion of our rigorous due diligence process that has been ongoing for well over a year and a half. And since I haven't done it yet, especially when I mention a performance number, Now's a great time to remind you that there are endnotes and footnotes and details that qualify certain parts of this letter, and I strongly encourage you to review them by reading the letter online. Global diversified royalties strategy. As you know, we love the Music Royalties Fund most of our clients own, and we continuously seek similar, less, or non-correlated asset classes. One of the largest private market investors in the world is bringing its US $2 billion diversified royalties fund— that's media, music, pharma, life sciences, energy transition, and more— to Canada. And so far we like what we see, but our due diligence is ongoing. Gold. Our firm has not historically invested directly in gold. Admittedly, we missed that trade over the past few years, but through our AI-assisted historical analysis and continued discussions with gold experts, including my recent podcast episode featuring Peter Grosskopf, one of Canada's foremost gold experts, we are seeing the uncorrelated nature of its performance and potential for portfolio inflation protection. Critical minerals/materials. I have previously written about our desire to capture the upside of the AI revolution. It is clear to me that empowering the world with AI, whose demand will likely be insatiable, will require an abundance of critical materials, the likes of which the world has never seen. For example, according to Dan Dreyfus, CEO of Borneite Capital, a global investment fund with a core focus specifically in commodity-related sectors, in his presentation at the All In Liquidity Summit last month— and there's a link to that in the letter, by the way— quote, we need copper for everything. Going back in human history, we have mined 700 million tons of copper over the past 10,000 years. Over the next 18 years, we are going to need 700 million tons of copper. We're going to need as much copper as we've mined in the last 10,000 years. End quote. And copper is just one of the many critical materials the world is going to need in abundance. We have identified a strategy focused on gaining exposure to some of the most critical materials and may include this in client portfolios. Again, as always, where appropriate. All the above is just part of the picture. Managing your portfolio is continuous work. We're constantly reviewing your existing holdings and adjusting them alongside evaluating new strategies, and far more gets reviewed than ever makes it into your account. As always, we only make changes where they make sense for your specific goals, objectives, and risk tolerances. Looking back on our first 5 years, I'm grateful for many things.— the trust you have placed in us, the team we have built, the investment gains we have helped generate, the problems we have helped solve, and the relationships we have formed along the way. But I'm also grateful for something else: the clarity that came from making a hard decision. Walking away from the US opportunity was not a retreat from ambition. It was a recommitment to purpose. We do not need to be everything to everyone everywhere. We need to be exceptional for the Canadian families we serve and for the Canadian families we may be fortunate enough to serve in the future. You've come first for the last 5 years. You will come first for the next 5 too. My name is still on the door, I promise. Thank you for your continued trust, support, and confidence. We are available 24/7 should you need us. Sincerely, me, Brian. Brian Ginsler, President and CEO, So thanks for listening to my latest quarterly letter. More podcasts on the way this year, or on the way this coming quarter. And wish you all the best for the summer. Have a wonderful summer, everybody. Reach out if we could be of any help in any way. That's what we're here to do, whether you're a client or not, frankly. We just want to be helpful to folks and wish you all the best. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.

The Unlimited Podcast is hosted and produced by Brian Ginsler and is edited and mixed by myself, David McMillan. This podcast is not to be taken as investment advice. If you like what you heard, don't forget to rate the podcast and follow us on social media @GinslerWealth. Thanks for listening and see you next time.