What new record price has gold hit?Hiba Kola/Reuters
Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s business and investing news quiz. Join us each week to test your knowledge of the stories making headlines. Our business reporters come up with the questions, and you can show us what you know.
This week: Gold has been on a tear and all over headlines this week after it surpassed another record price point, which has stirred up M&A activity in Canada’s mining sector. What new height has it reached? Take our quiz and find out.
c. US$5,000 an ounce. This is getting nearly boring, isn’t it? Well, okay, maybe not if you’re a gold investor who is watching his or her portfolio soar in value thanks to the rise of the yellow metal. Bullion has shattered one record after another in recent months and this week shot through the US$5,000-an-ounce mark.
a. Allied Gold agreed to be acquired by Zijin in a deal that will test Ottawa’s appetite for Chinese investment in the mining sector. Zijin, which is indirectly owned by the Chinese government, intends to pay $44 a share in cash for Toronto-based Allied, representing an all-time high for the stock.
d. "Great." Mr. Trump said Tuesday the value of the U.S. dollar was fine with him. “No, I think it’s great, the value of the dollar ... dollar’s doing great,” the U.S. President said when asked by a reporter if he thought the value of the dollar had declined too much. The currency promptly lost more value in the wake of his comment, hitting a four-year low.
d. South Korea. Mr. Trump accused South Korea’s legislature of “not living up” to its trade deal with Washington, and said he would increase tariffs on U.S. imports from Asia’s fourth-biggest economy to 25 per cent.
b. India and the European Union reached what one official described as "the mother of all deals" this week after nearly two decades of negotiations. The trade accord between two of the world’s biggest markets could affect as many as two billion people. It seems that countries want to find alternatives to trading with the U.S. Can you blame them?
a. Bring South Korean auto manufacturing and investment to Canada. Ottawa and Seoul have signed a memorandum of understanding with these aims, according to a document reviewed by The Globe and Mail. The two countries are exploring closer economic links as South Korea campaigns to win a multibillion-dollar contract to build up to 12 submarines for the Royal Canadian Navy.
c. Launch a vast fleet of robotaxis. Waabi said it plans to launch at least 25,000 robotaxis on Uber Technologies’ ride-hailing service. However, it disclosed few details about where and when the first robotaxis will launch, or whether the company has performed on-road testing.
b. The chief executive of a prominent AI company. Dario Amodei, co-founder of Claude chatbot-maker Anthropic, published an essay on Jan. 26, titled “The Adolescence of Technology,” in which he predicts that, at current trends, “it cannot possibly be more than a few years before AI is better than humans at essentially everything.” This super AI “would have a fairly good shot at taking over the world (either militarily or in terms of influence and control) and imposing its will on everyone else,” Mr. Amodei declares. He argues that we can – and should – take action to prevent this.
c. Meta Platforms’ stock price jumped after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to boost the company’s capital spending plans for 2026 by 73 per cent to between US$115-billion and US$135-billion. Mr. Zuckerberg wants his company to achieve “superintelligence,” which would allow it to offer personalized artificial intelligence to its social media users.
d. Midterms Are Coming. Economist Claudia Sahm invented the acronym. It refers to the notion that the White House will pull out all stops to ensure the U.S. economy is running red hot before crucial midterm elections in November.
Amazon, ASML and UPS. It seems this new AI-powered economy may not be a workers’ paradise after all. This week, Amazon said it was cutting 16,000 jobs, while United Parcel Service announced it was chopping up to 30,000 operational roles and ASML unveiled plans to lay off 1,700 people. Don’t worry, though. McDonald’s is doing just fine.
d. Canada Post offices. Wealthsimple is planning to offer customers a way to deposit cash through their local post office. The company is testing the new service for a select group of customers and hopes to make it available to all Wealthsimple customers in a few weeks.