Tim Shufelt

Tim Shufelt is an investment reporter at The Globe and Mail, covering how economic forces, policy decisions and investor behaviour shape financial markets, with a particular focus on Canadian equities and the energy sector. He has reported on investments for the Globe’s Report on Business since 2013, bringing a consistent lens of market cycles, risk and opportunity to retail and institutional investors. His coverage stands out for explaining why markets move in ways that look irrational on the surface, and for connecting those moves to concrete decisions about portfolios and retirement planning.

Stock market cycles and investor behaviour

Shufelt’s core work examines stock market cycles and the psychology of investors living through them. In pieces such as “Markets don’t collapse on cue” and “Have investors forgotten how to panic?”, he shows that bear markets rarely arrive on schedule and that investors often react more mildly to crises than the headlines would suggest. He traces how major shocks, from geopolitical threats to economic downturns, translate into actual index moves, highlighting cases where markets rise even as political risk spikes. The argument in these columns is straightforward: the threats investors obsess over are often not the ones that end a bull market, and panic is less common than the narrative implies.

He frequently situates current conditions inside long historical runs, framing the present as part of larger cycles rather than as isolated events. In “A historic bull market is under way. Don’t overthink it.” he contrasts the current surge in Canadian and U.S. benchmarks with past eras of towering returns, then distills the takeaway into simple guidance about staying invested, keeping fees low and avoiding market timing. Pieces like “Why so many Canadian investors are leaving money on the table” extend that logic to retirement planning, arguing that investors are underusing a powerful stock market run when they stick to overly conservative allocations.

Behavioural themes recur throughout his beat. In “How the World Cup messes with investors’ heads” he explores how major sporting events disrupt routines and influence trading decisions, tying everyday distractions to portfolio performance. In “Feel like the markets are rigged? You’re not entirely wrong” he examines prediction markets and event-based trading, acknowledging the perception of rigging while explaining the regulatory and structural realities behind these platforms. Across these stories, Shufelt’s distinctive trait is a focus on how real people respond to volatility and how those responses either harness or squander long bull markets.

Energy markets and resource investing

Energy and resources are a second pillar of Shufelt’s coverage, where he links sector moves to broader market stress and transition risks. In work such as “Canada’s oil and gas stocks take a plunge amid banking upheaval,” he shows how financial-sector turmoil can cascade into resource shares, framing oil and gas performance as part of a wider risk-off dynamic rather than a purely commodity story. His reporting on what he describes as history’s worst energy crisis without the usual price shock dissects why supply strains and geopolitical disruption have not translated into the familiar surge at the pump, and what that means for energy producers and investors.

Shufelt also covers the investment side of the energy transition. Articles highlighted by industry observers on “clean energy stocks” describe a “monumental slump” in these names in Canada and globally, contrasting earlier expectations that renewables would displace oil and gas in mainstream portfolios with their current status as a “no-go zone” for many investors. He uses that reversal to probe how climate policy, subsidy structures and investor sentiment intersect in listed markets, weighing long-term transition narratives against short-term performance pain. This strand of his work makes clear that his energy beat is not limited to commodity prices; it spans traditional producers, clean-tech equities and the capital flows between them.

Economic shocks, policy and market structure

Beyond daily market moves, Shufelt reports on how economic policy, trade tensions and market structure shape investment outcomes over time. Earlier “Market Factors” pieces such as “Where Canadian investors have been hiding from tariffs” and “Why stock market chaos made Trump blink on tariffs” track the impact of trade disputes and tariff announcements on sector rotations, showing where capital seeks shelter when policy risk rises. He links political decisions to specific segments of the market, clarifying which industries bear the brunt of uncertainty and which quietly benefit.

Structural questions about Canada’s capital markets also feature in his work. In collaboration with colleagues on stories like “Why Canada can’t grow its corporate minnows into sharks,” he examines the difficulty small public companies face in scaling up, connecting listing trends and regulatory environments to the shrinking pool of mid-sized issuers. Coverage of major projects, such as “Canada built the Gordie Howe bridge,” similarly treats infrastructure not only as engineering feats but as long-term economic assets shaped by public finance, cross-border trade and investor expectations. Through these threads, Shufelt shows how the rules of the game — from regulation to industrial policy — influence what kinds of companies and projects reach public markets.

Beat evolution and background in finance journalism

Shufelt joined The Globe and Mail in August 2013, primarily to cover investments for Report on Business, and later expanded his mandate to report on how the economy impacts investments. Before the Globe, he worked as a general assignment reporter at a national financial outlet, covering Canadian, U.S. and international economies, currencies and capital markets. That background in macroeconomics and markets underpins his current focus on the intersection between economic data, policy shifts and portfolio strategy.

He appears on the Globe’s podcast The Decibel to explain stock market developments to a broader audience, such as making sense of a booming bull market that confounds traditional expectations. Across print and audio, his reporting style is characterised by clear explanatory writing, frequent use of charts and historical comparisons, and an emphasis on what market events mean for investors rather than for trading desks alone. The result is a beat that consistently bridges high-level market analysis with the practical concerns of people deciding where to put their money.