Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s business and investing news quiz. Each week, join us to test your knowledge of the stories making the headlines. Our business reporters come up with the questions, and you can show us what you know.
Take our quiz below to test your recall for the week ending July 7.
1 Longshore workers in British Columbia are on strike. What was their median income last year, according to an employers’ association?
a. $95,000
b. $115,000
c. $136,000
d. $152,000
2 The Ontario government this week announced its ambition to build Canada’s first new, full-scale nuclear plant in three decades. Roughly how much of the province’s electricity currently comes from nuclear sources?
a. 20 per cent
b. 33 per cent
c. 45 per cent
d. 59 per cent
d. 59 per cent In 2019, nuclear generated 59 per cent of the province’s electricity. (Hydroelectricity contributed another 24 per cent, wind 8 per cent and solar 1 per cent. Add it up and 92 per cent of Ontario’s electricity came from zero-carbon sources.)
3 The gap between rich and poor is widening at its fastest pace on record, according to Statistics Canada data published this week. The poorest 40 per cent of the population now owns how much of the nation’s total wealth?
a. 2.7 per cent
b. 5.9 per cent
c. 12.1 per cent
d. 24.0 per cent
a. 2.7 per cent To be fair, these poorer households tend to be younger than average. Still, the gap between haves and have-nots is striking. In the first quarter of this year, the top 20 per cent of Canada’s population accounted for more than two-thirds (67.8 per cent) of the country’s net worth.
4 Japan Airlines has unveiled an innovative plan to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by cutting back on the weight its planes must carry. Starting this week, the airline will:
a. Charge passengers by their body weight
b. Allow visitors to Japan to rent clothes for the duration of their stay
c. Replace human flight attendants with small robots
b. Rent clothes The program is called Any Wear, Anywhere and enables passengers to rent a bundle of clothing in advance and keep the items for up to two weeks.
5 Stocks! They’re the road to riches, amiright? Ignoring dividends, how much would someone who invested in the S&P/TSX Composite Index two years ago have made by now?
a. 0 per cent
b. 5 per cent
c. 10 per cent
d. 25 per cent
6 Throw down alert! Tech billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg seem to have agreed – maybe, sort of, but who really knows? – to a cage match. Whether that brawl ever happens or not, Mr. Zuckerberg, boss of Meta Platforms, landed a big punch this week when he unveiled a new app designed to rival Mr. Musk’s struggling Twitter platform. The new “Twitter killer” is called:
a. Smackdown
b. Threads
c. Fitter
d. Metahead
b. Threads The new app will function as a companion to Meta’s Instagram. It aims to capitalize on the turmoil surrounding Twitter by offering a rival site where people can have public, text-based conversations with one another in real time.
7 What percentage of Canadians say they have no problems keeping up with their financial commitments?
a. 50 per cent
b. 61 per cent
c. 39 per cent
d. 22 per cent
c. 39 per cent The percentage of Canadians without financial issues has plunged over the past couple of years, according to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada. In late 2020, 57 per cent of Canadians said they were having no problems meeting their financial commitments.
8 What is a reasonable debt-to-income (the per cent of your monthly budget be allotted to debt repayment) ratio?
a. 30 per cent
b. 50 per cent
c. 20 per cent
d. 80 per cent
a. 30 per cent That’s the maximum recommended by many money experts, as matches up exactly with the credit utilization percentage – the portion of your available credit that you are actually using. But of course the lower the better.
9 What is the lowest available insured variable mortgage rate this week?
a. 4.79
b. 5.19
c. 5.35
d. 5.65
c. 5.65 The lowest nationally available insured variable-rate mortgage as of July 6 was 5.65, according to columnist Robert McLister. Meanwhile, TKTKTTK offered a TKTKTTK rate for uninsured variable-rate mortgages.
A remarkable old house that remained nearly unchanged as it was handed down through the generations of one family, this Grimsby, Ont. home is a local landmark.
a. $1.2-million
b. $1.8-million
c. $2.1-million
d. $4.2-million
How well did you do?
Answer all of the questions to see your result