The Take Down
Issue #004, Real life resumed
Hi, it’s Caroline.
Hi, it’s Caroline.
We landed back in Toronto from New York a week ago, and the NYSE high evaporated approximately the second I opened my email inbox the next morning. A stack of bills, a softball schedule, and roughly 4,000 unread messages, all waiting like they’d been holding a grudge. That’s the deal with these weeks. The marquee moment is fun, the photos are great, the energy is unmatched, and then real life walks back through the door like it never left, with its laundry and its dental appointments and its very long to-do lists.
Welcome to the comedown issue.
The video this week: 4 Mispriced Stocks
We dropped 4 Mispriced Stocks this week, four names where the market may have gotten the price wrong. It’s the kind of episode that’s fun to make because it forces you to do something most investors skip, which is to take a clear-eyed look at what something is actually worth, not what it’s currently trading for. Worth a watch if you’re a value-curious investor, or just want to know what we think the crowd is missing right now.
AI Under the Hood: Anthropic just came for Wall Street
I also filmed a new AI Under the Hood this week, and it’s a big one because the story behind it is genuinely huge.
Anthropic just released 10 new AI agents built specifically for finance. These agents can draft pitch decks, review financial statements, escalate compliance reviews, and basically do the work that armies of junior analysts do every day at the biggest financial institutions in the world. The market noticed immediately, and the reaction was sharp. FactSet, Morningstar, S&P Global, and Moody’s all dropped on the news, with FactSet alone falling 8% in a single trading session.
I broke it all down in the episode, what’s actually happening, who’s at real risk, and the questions every investor should be asking themselves right now. Watch it here.
The Week
Monday: home by 11. Late, tired, and bracing for a Tuesday that arrived way too quickly.
Tuesday onward: bills, brand calls, Zooms, brand campaigns, Global X work for Jon, repeat. This is the unglamorous engine room of running a business, and while it’s not as exciting as ringing a bell at a stock exchange, it’s the part that actually keeps the lights on. The boring stuff is, somehow, always the most important stuff.
A guest interview for an upcoming episode. A great Zoom with someone I cannot yet name, for an episode I cannot yet announce. What I can say is we’ve got something good cooking and I’m excited for you to see it.
More Ticker Take filming with a guest at the home studio. Yes, our home studio, which sits about 20 feet from a kitchen full of teenage snacks and approximately twelve pairs of someone’s shoes by the door. Show business, but make it domestic.
Kickboxing. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in the morning. Two years in and I am, somehow, finally hitting my stride. This week’s highlight: a fellow classmate looked over mid-combo and said “Caroline is killing it today!” I will absolutely be putting that quote in my LinkedIn bio.
Two softball games. Cold ones, again, played at the kind of hour that makes you question your choices and your circulation. I have officially made peace with the fact that watching softball in Canadian May weather, bundled up like I’m waiting for a Greyhound, is now a permanent part of my mothering identity.
My 15-year-old daughter sang a solo at her spring concert.
I’m going to slow down on this one for a second.
She got up on a stage in front of her entire school and sang her solo, and she was genuinely incredible. She has such a beautiful voice, and watching her sing in front of all those people, I was so impressed by her courage. Getting up there at 15, just her and a microphone, is a feat I don’t think I would have had the nerve for at her age. I cried. Of course I cried. Anyone who tells you they don’t cry at their teenager’s school concerts has either never had a teenager or is lying directly to your face, and I will not be taking questions on this.
Mother’s Day, and a morning I won’t forget. This year, my girls spoiled me on their own initiative, with no nudging from Jon, which felt like the win of all wins given that they are 13 and 15 and currently in the developmental phase where being thoughtful toward your mother is sometimes treated as a personal inconvenience. They went out and bought me flowers, hand cream, and a beautiful hair clip. They made me chenille pipe cleaner lilies, which, if you have ever tried to twist a pipe cleaner into a flower shape, you’ll know is no small feat of patience or coordination.
The cards are what got me. They wrote, in their own handwriting, that they couldn’t imagine life without me. They thanked me for being kind, smart, caring, pretty, charismatic, and strong. They wrote about my drive and my passion and called me the glue that holds the family together. Reader, I am the glue. They are not wrong about that. But hearing my teenagers say it on their own, with no prompting and no scripting, in handwriting that I’ve watched evolve since kindergarten, is the kind of moment you fold up carefully and tuck away to pull out on the hard days. I’ll be replaying it for a long while.
Jon, of course, also delivered. He gave me a stunning bunch of long-stem white roses (which meant I had two bouquets on the kitchen table, theirs and his) and a really lovely card. He also offered to drive me to lunch with my mom and sister, which was the plan, right up until our car decided it had other ideas and refused to start. Yes, more car trouble. Possibly the battery, possibly the power steering, possibly something I don’t even know the name of, the car is currently at the shop and the mechanics are working through it.
I ended up taking an Uber. Eventually I sat down to a slow, lovely lunch at Joey’s with my mom and my sister. Two generations of women I love sitting around one table, sharing rosé and farmers market salads at 2 PM, with absolutely no work talk for almost two whole hours, which in my current life feels like a small miracle. I love these lunches.
Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM
Jon this week: still up at 5, jogging, then onto the Global X shoot, then onto Ticker Take, then writing for BNN Bloomberg, then his Trade Off piece for The Globe and Mail, then onto whatever partner call I forgot to put in his calendar. The man does not stop. (See: him not stopping.)
Me this week: kickboxing in the mornings, brand calls all day, AI Under the Hood production, thumbnails, sound fixes, filming our YouTube video, organizing files for production, this Substack, the bills, the kids, the snacks, the laundry pile that came home from New York, and a Mother’s Day that completely undid me in the best possible way.
The Juggle
This week, in no particular order:
Landed back from NYC late Monday night
New video live: 4 Mispriced Stocks
New AI Under the Hood: Anthropic Just Came for Wall Street
A guest interview for an upcoming episode (cannot say more)
Ticker Take filming with a guest at the home studio
Thumbnails, sound fixes, file organization, this Substack
Bills paid, and then more bills
Brand calls, brand campaigns, Zooms, repeat
Jon’s Global X work
Two cold softball games
Kickboxing (Mon/Wed/Fri), and a glowing peer review
15-year-old’s spring concert solo (I cried)
Mother’s Day with my girls and Jon, plus a slow afternoon lunch with my sister and mom
Car trouble (again)
Scripting, recording, editing, posting, repeat
The Wins This Week
My 15-year-old’s solo. Top win, no contest.
Mother’s Day with my girls. Flowers, pipe cleaner lilies, handwritten cards, the works. I will be recovering emotionally for some time.
Jon’s long-stem white roses and the world’s nicest card. Two bouquets in one day. Spoiled.
Mother’s Day lunch with my mom and sister, rosé, farmers market salads, and zero work talk for almost two whole hours
New video live: 4 Mispriced Stocks. Watch it.
New AI Under the Hood on Anthropic. Hot topic, hot drop.
A guest interview that left me buzzing. More on that soon.
Got home from NYC and didn’t fall apart. Clean reentry.
Two softball games attended. Cold but committed.
“Caroline is killing it today!” A direct quote, unsolicited, from kickboxing class. I have peaked.
The Losses This Week
Sleep: New shocking development: still none.
Bills: Several. They keep coming.
My eyeliner during the spring concert solo: Did not survive.
My eyeliner again on Mother’s Day morning: Also did not survive. It was a week.
The post-NYC laundry pile: Larger than the trip itself.
The car: At the shop. Cause unclear.
The takeaway
Last week we were in a building made of marble, ringing bells, hearing our name called from a stage in front of a room of people in the industry. This week, I’m sitting in our home studio with a teenager’s empty cereal bowl on the counter, watching my older daughter find a part of her voice I’d never heard before, opening cards from both of my girls, and crying twice in three days for completely different reasons.
There’s something my video this week got me thinking about. The market gets prices wrong all the time, and so do we. We overvalue the marquee weeks and undervalue the quiet ones. The NYSE shoot was big and it mattered and I’ll remember it forever. But the spring concert, the pipe cleaner lilies, the cards, the long afternoon over rosé with my sister and my mom? Those were the moments of the week, and I would not have traded a single one of them for anything.
The real wins are usually mispriced too. They rarely come with a stock ticker.
Happy belated Mother’s Day to anyone reading this who needed it.
Big things coming. Stay tuned.
Thanks for being here. See you next week.
Caroline
P.S. Jon’s Substack this week is worth a read. Subscribe if you haven’t, you’ll get both sides of our brain.