Investors eye the Bank of Canada's rate call as easing tensions cool oil's surge
A US$1tn rout in US chipmakers on Friday unwound almost as fast as it struck, and the rebound carried into Canada on Monday, lifting the S&P/TSX composite index 65.29 points, or 0.2 percent, to 34,478.74.
According to Reuters, the index recovered part of Friday's slide of more than 800 points, its biggest decline in nearly four months, with energy and technology shares leading the way.
The energy sector rose 1.6 percent as oil settled 0.8 percent higher at US$91.30 a barrel, while technology gained 0.9 percent, with electronic equipment maker Celestica Inc up 3.8 percent.
Attention now turns to the Bank of Canada's rate decision on Wednesday, with a majority of economists polled by Reuters expecting the central bank to hold its benchmark rate at 2.25 percent for a fifth straight meeting.
The federal government is also launching a loan program to help domestic airlines manage high fuel prices and protect operations and jobs, the finance ministry told Reuters; Air Canada shares fell 0.7 percent.
TD Cowen lifted price targets on several Canadian defence names, including Bombardier Inc and Magellan Aerospace, the latter closing 6.4 percent higher..
"On Friday we saw this tech-led … sell-off and today it's the opposite, it's a tech-led rebound," said Angelo Kourkafas, senior investment strategist at Edward Jones, as quoted by BNN Bloomberg.
He said positive sentiment in the US was driving much of the move in Canada's tech sector, and that markets had looked "a bit overextended" after nine straight weeks of gains.
South of the border, US markets ended mixed, BNN Bloomberg reported.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 80.77 points, or 0.16 percent, to 50,786.01, while the S&P 500 rose 0.3 percent to 7,405.73 and the Nasdaq composite added 0.86 percent to 25,929.66.
The S&P 500's gain followed a 2.6 percent drop on Friday, its worst session since October, the AP News noted.
Chipmakers led the recovery after Friday's losses erased US$1tn in market value, Reuters reported, with the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor Index jumping 5.6 percent.
Marvell Technology climbed 9.6 percent ahead of its June 22 entry into the S&P 500, after S&P Dow Jones Indices said it had grown enough to join; Marvell has more than tripled this year.
Micron Technology rose 9.9 percent a day after a 13.3 percent slide, and Intel gained 11.2 percent after the Information reported that Google had ordered more than 3m tensor processing units for 2028.
Apple bucked the trend, finishing 1.9 percent lower even after unveiling AI upgrades to Siri at its Worldwide Developers Conference.
AP News reported the swings revived the question of whether Friday's selloff marked the start of a downturn or a healthy pause, after a semiconductor index surged nearly 85 percent for the year through Thursday.
"This market has been priced for quite a while for perfection, and these are certainly imperfect times," said Rick Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments, as quoted by Reuters.
Michael Wilson, a strategist at Morgan Stanley, called a correction "inevitable and ultimately healthy" and kept a baseline S&P 500 target of 8,000, the AP News reported.
Oil prices spiked after Israel and Iran traded strikes, with Brent crude briefly topping US$98 a barrel overnight before settling at US$94.25, up 1.2 percent from Friday.
The two sides later said they had halted attacks after US President Donald Trump urged them to "stop 'shooting'," though Tehran warned it would resume if Israel kept striking Hezbollah in Lebanon, Reuters reported.
The Canadian dollar traded at 71.70 cents US, down from 71.82 cents US on Friday, while the August gold contract eased US$1.90 to US$4,363.40 an ounce, according to BNN Bloomberg.
