“Global imbalances are growing and may also be fuelling financial stability risks”: BoC's Macklem

By Jacob Sonenshine Pinterest is down about 42% since Barron's recommended the stock in June 2025. During that time the S&P 500 has gained 29%. Time to move on. The problem isn't that Pinterest doesn't have long-term growth potential. It's that it has repeatedly failed to sustain a super high growth rate, creating uncertainty. Our thesis was that revenue growth would hold strong and the company's artificial intelligence usage would enable it to match the right products and advertisements with users. The hope was that Pinterest, with its hundreds of millions of users and more than $4 billion of annual sales, would grow within a global digital ad market worth hundreds of billions, as it would increasingly monetize its users. It has grown -- but not consistently at a high rate. Pinterest will continue to grow, but the market's concern doesn't appear likely to subside soon; revenue growth often decelerates by several percentage points, which causes large selloffs in the shares. The root of the problem is that whenever growth slows, the market is left to wonder if the platform is beginning to lose its relevance. Users now have a crowded field of options for finding personal and household trinkets to buy. Maybe the growth story isn't as beautiful as investors had hoped years ago, when the stock was at record highs of close to $90. Consider second quarter earnings, which management released Aug. 4, and caused the stock to drop. Yes, sales of $1.18 billion beat analyst's expectations and grew about 18% year over year, and yes, adjusted earnings per share of 43 cents beat estimates and grew 30%, as profit margins expanded. But the guidance signaled slowing growth yet again. Management guided for third quarter revenue of $1.2 billion at the midpoint of the range. That implies 14% year over year growth. Chief Financial Officer Julia Donnelly said on the earnings call that second quarter growth was strong partly due to the combination of brands increasing their ad spend around Amazon Prime Day and "World Cup-related spend th