What I Learned from 2025
One door closes, another opens
At the beginning of 2025, I had a big plan in place for our real estate company.
For more than a year, I had been developing a relationship with a seasoned development expert — we’ll call him Mr. Half a Billion.
The nickname fits.
He has overseen over $500M worth of real estate projects throughout his career.
Entering into 2025, we had a little over 20M of development projects in our pipeline.
That amount consisted a number of smaller projects, combined.
Our plan was to pursuing larger-scale development projects in the $20–30M range each.
It was exciting.
I had already floated the idea to a few of our partners, planting the seed that we might be bringing in additional capital partners on the next deal.
We even had a beautiful plot of land under review: underwriting, running models, stress-testing assumptions.
Everything was lined up.
Then…
Few weeks into the year, everything changed
The plan was put on hold.
The tariff war began.
At first, it was just rhetoric, a war of words.
Then came the threats.
Then came the real uncertainty.
For a development project in the $20–30M range, confidence in the numbers matters more than optimism.
And suddenly, confidence disappeared.
Would tariffs be 10%?
Or 25%?
Which materials would be affected?
When costs can swing hundreds of thousands based on policy headlines, no amount of fancy formulas on a spreadsheet can adequately model a project.
Uncertainty spiked through the roof.
Frozen business climate
Similar to the freezing Canadian winter, many Canadian businesses were paralyzed in Q1.
Deals stalled.
Expansion plans paused.
Capital sat on the sidelines.
I spoke with business owners across different industries, not just real estate.
The tone was the same everywhere:
“We’re waiting to see what happens.”
Waiting is understandable.
But waiting also comes with a cost.
In a frozen environment, doing nothing often feels safer than making a decision.
Yet, indecision quietly erodes momentum.
Letting go is easy, making the decision is harder
On paper, walking away sounded simple.
In reality, it wasn’t.
A lot went into building the relationship with Mr. Half a Billion:
Countless conversations
Shared visions
Trust built over time
On top of that, we had already invested significant time, effort, and capital into due diligence on the potential project:
Land analysis.
Preliminary designs.
Financial modeling.
As it turns out, letting go of the project itself wasn’t the hardest part.
The hardest part?
Making the decision.
Thanks to the tariff threat, we were forced to pivot
One door closes, another opens.
It may sound cliché, but it’s an essential mindset - especially in investing and business.
If we had pushed forward with the original plan, I’m 99% certain it would not have turned into a good investment.
So we officially walked away.
The entire expansion plan - working on bigger projects with Mr. Half a Billion, nearly a year in the making.
Went back on the shelf.
At first, it felt like a setback.
In hindsight, it was a gift.
The 2025 pivot opened us up to bigger and better opportunities.
Opportunities we likely wouldn’t have seen if we were still emotionally attached to the original plan.
For now, I’m not ready to share the details just yet.
We will share them when they are ready in the coming months and years.
2026 Economy and Market Predictions
Which brings us to this time of the year.
As what I have been doing the past few years, I’m sharing publicly of my annual Economy and Market Predictions.
I’ll be releasing my 2026 Predictions soon.
In the past, this has been one of our most popular webinars.
What attendees consistently tell me they appreciate is this:
I present charts and data in a way that everyday investors can understand, and then connect the dots with how I believe things could unfold in the year ahead.
We haven’t finalized the date and time yet.
If you’re interested, simply reply to this email, and we’ll let you know once everything is confirmed.
If you like my work, I invite you to share it with others.
Eric Chang
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
January 6, 2026
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