Investors brace for the Bank of Canada rate decision and a wave of US bank earnings
Oil prices climbed on Sunday night as renewed US-Iran strikes around the Strait of Hormuz revived supply fears, leaving Canadian investors to weigh energy risk against a week that features the Bank of Canada’s rate decision and the start of US bank earnings.
Brent crude futures rose 3.88 percent to US$78.96 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate gained 4.1 percent to US$74.33 as of 9:15 pm ET, CNBC reported.
US equity futures pointed lower, with Dow Jones Industrial Average futures off 135 points, or 0.3 percent, S&P 500 futures down 0.3 percent and Nasdaq-100 futures down 0.5 percent.
About 20 percent of the world’s oil supplies passed through Hormuz before the US and Israel struck Iran earlier this year, as per CNBC.
Iran declared the strait closed over the weekend, though US Central Command disputed that and said traffic was still flowing, the network reported.
The central story at home is the Bank of Canada’s interest rate decision this week, with economists expecting no change to the key rate.
Friday’s jobs data gave the bank little reason to move: Statistics Canada said employers added 18,000 positions in June, mostly part-time and private-sector work, which pushed the unemployment rate down a tenth of a point to 6.5 percent, its January level.
Markets are waiting on corporate earnings before they move, Allan Small, senior investment adviser at iA Private Wealth, told The Canadian Press.
He said the war with Iran "can make the markets do crazy things," though investors "seem to be in this holding pattern for now."
Small added that oil carries a war premium, and put prices at roughly US$55 to US$60 a barrel without the conflict.
Technology kept driving equities.
CNBC reported that Nvidia gave the S&P 500 its biggest single lift on Friday, rising about 4 percent, while Meta Platforms climbed roughly 6 percent and logged its strongest week since early 2024.
Bank of America kept its buy rating on Meta, citing an internal memo reviewed by Reuters that points to a possible improvement in the company’s AI cost structure.
South Korean memory-chip maker SK Hynix made its US debut on Friday, opening at US$170 on the Nasdaq and closing at US$168.01, up about 13 percent.
The company priced its American depositary receipts at US$149 each and raised US$26.5bn from 177.9m of them, in what BNN Bloomberg called the largest initial share sale in the US by a foreign company.
Its Seoul-listed shares have more than tripled over the past year, the outlet said.
Other chip names have run hard in 2026, with Micron up more than 200 percent and Lam Research, Marvell Technology and Intel each more than doubling, as reported by CNBC.
That has sharpened the debate over whether AI can keep justifying the gains.
“We’re clearly in a boom phase right now, but I do have genuine concerns about some sort of bust coming in the second half of the year,” said Eric Parnell, chief market strategist at Great Valley Advisor Group, in comments to CNBC.
The earnings calendar will test that optimism.
Several of the largest US banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, report this week, alongside Netflix, Johnson & Johnson and UnitedHealth.
Analysts expect second-quarter S&P 500 profits grew more than 23 percent from a year earlier, according to FactSet data cited by CNBC.
Larry Adam, chief investment officer at Raymond James, told clients he expects hyperscalers to reaffirm and lift capital spending plans through 2028, pointing to evidence that businesses gain from AI adoption.
The June US consumer price index is due Tuesday.
Markets came into the week off a higher Friday finish.
Canada’s S&P/TSX composite index rose 104.86 points to 35,305.31, The Canadian Press reported, while the S&P 500 added 0.42 percent to 7,575.39, the Nasdaq composite gained 0.29 percent to 26,281.61 and the Dow rose 149.60 points to 52,637.01.
Over the week, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq each advanced more than 1 percent and the Dow slipped 0.5 percent, CNBC reported.
The Canadian dollar traded at 70.69 cents US, up from 70.58 cents US a day earlier.
