The Globe and Mail reports in its Wednesday edition that consider this if you think Canada is broken: The S&P/TSX Composite Index was up 24 per cent in the first nine months of 2025, with an annualized total return of 16.7 per cent for the previous five years. The Globe's Rob Carrick writes that the U.S. benchmark, the S&P 500 Index, lags this year, but it is roughly even for the past five years when measured in Canadian dollars. Stock-market strategists have their theories about why stocks are so strong, including massive investments in artificial intelligence, the expectation that interest rates will keep falling and the resilience of the economy. Those five-year returns are better than double the long-term average for stocks. This cannot and most certainly will not last indefinitely. Prepare now for declines to come by checking the liquidity of your holdings, identifying your portfolio pain points, rebalancing (70-per-cent/30-per-cent mix of stocks and bonds could easily be pushed to 80/20 if you let the stocks run and do not add to the bonds) and keeping cash in your RRIF. A well-designed registered retirement income fund includes enough cash to cover two to three years of mandatory withdrawals.