With Canada CPI heading toward 3% and five-year bond yields at 3.2%, the conventional wisdom about what goes inside a TFSA and what belongs in an RRSP needs a direct re-examination. The real return math has changed.

Markets are selling off this morning not because anything went wrong in Beijing — but because nothing went spectacularly right. That distinction matters enormously for investors, and most of them will not make it.

The TSX fell 0.5% Wednesday as technology names dropped 2% to a one-month low while energy stocks held steady above $100 oil. The divergence tells a specific story about how the Canadian market is pricing the Hormuz supply shock versus the inflation-driven rate re-rating.

The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed to normal commercial traffic since late February. Seventy-six days in, the IEA says the market will remain significantly undersupplied until October even if the conflict ends next month. The Canadian portfolio implications run deeper than the oil price.

Kevin Warsh was confirmed as Federal Reserve chair Wednesday with the narrowest margin in the modern era. He inherits back-to-back inflation shocks and a central bank whose next move markets now price as more likely a hike than a cut. What it means for the Bank of Canada's June 10 decision.

Oil above $100 has pushed many Canadian energy and commodity positions into significant unrealized gains. With the Bank of Canada on hold and the inclusion rate debate unresolved, the planning question for advisors is whether clients should be acting on those gains now.

Two consecutive data surprises are triggering a well-documented cognitive pattern. Here is what the research shows about how investors process sequential bad news, and why the worst decisions tend to follow the clearest-seeming signals.

U.S. wholesale inflation came in at double the consensus at 8:30 AM. The TSX is absorbing the number through a familiar split: energy names firm on elevated oil, gold miners lower on dollar strength, banks uncertain on which direction rates move. The Trump-Xi summit starting tomorrow is the next catalyst.

U.S. wholesale inflation came in at +6.0% year-over-year this morning, twice the consensus and the hottest reading since December 2022. The services component was the tell. The Bank of Canada's April 29 framework just got significantly harder to defend.

Canadian energy stocks are up 40-55% since the Iran war began. Clients holding them inside a TFSA can rebalance tax-free. In a non-registered account, the same trade triggers capital gains at a 50% inclusion rate. The window is open. Most clients don't know it.

Markets recovered from the Iran war shock weeks ago. A measurable cohort of retail investors never came back. The research explains why — and what it costs them.

CPI inflation rose to 2.4% in March on the largest monthly gasoline price increase on record, and the BoC projected it will likely peak near 3% in April. Statistics Canada releases April CPI on May 19. Whatever that number shows will determine whether Macklem's rate hike language remains hypothetical or becomes operative.

New RRSP and TFSA contribution room took effect January 1. The capital gains inclusion rate is now law at two-thirds on gains above $250,000. LCGE increased to $1.25 million. With cumulative TFSA room at $109,000 for eligible Canadians and RRSP room at $33,810, the mid-year window for registered account optimization is open now.

When dramatic, vivid events dominate the news, the availability heuristic causes investors to overweight recent and visible risks and underweight gradual, probabilistic ones. The Hormuz crisis is producing exactly this pattern, and the portfolio decisions it is generating are systematically predictable.

A technical ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran has cooled the worst-case scenario. But the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, the IEA calls this the largest supply disruption in market history, and oil prices have a floor the market has not fully priced.

Macklem held at 2.25% and looked through the oil shock. But April CPI is projected near 3%, the April jobs report surprised to the downside, CUSMA looms on July 1, and the BoC is threading a policy needle with no clean historical parallel.