Market Analysis: Monday March 24th, 2025
Global Market Update
Canadian Markets
Canada's TSX rose on rising oil prices, while concerns around tariffs between Canada and the U.S., eased somewhat, which had been a source of uncertainty for Canadian investors. The trade tensions and the potential for tariffs had been creating volatility, so the easing of these concerns brought some relief to the market. Data out showed that Canadian February factory sales were most likely down approximately 0.2% for the month, while Canadian economists are forecasting a potential recession for Canada.
American Markets
U.S. stock markets also rose, particularly among tech stocks, which were leading the rally, on news of a breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) by Jack Ma's Ant Group.. Reports released on Monday confirmed that it was suggested that the U.S. government's approach to new tariffs might not be as aggressive as initially feared. Trade tensions between the U.S. and other countries, especially China, had been a key source of volatility for global markets. However, if the new tariff measures are more targeted and moderate, it would reduce the economic strain on U.S. businesses, boosting investor confidence.
European Markets
In Europe, stock markets closed lower, despite data that showed business activity in the euro zone grew at its fastest pace in seven months in March, a sign that the region's economy might be improving.
UK stocks also finished lower, even though there were gains in mining stocks, which helped cushion the overall losses. Data released on Monday showed that the UK's PMI hit a 6 month high. Overall market sentiment was weighed down by concerns over the reciprocal levies that could be imposed by the U.S.
Corporate Stock News
23andMe Holding Co:
Filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, aiming to sell itself. The company has secured $35 million in financing and intends to continue operating during the sale process. CEO Anne Wojcicki resigned after failed takeover bids.
Azek Company Inc:
James Hardie Industries announced an $8.75 billion acquisition of Azek, a U.S. decking maker, valuing Azek shares at $56.88 each, a 37.4% premium. Despite the premium, Azek shares fell due to concerns over paying too much amid a weak U.S. housing market.
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals:
JPMorgan raised the target price to $328 from $280, citing strong growth prospects for Amvuttra in treating TTR amyloidosis.
Apple Inc
China's Vice Premier He Lifeng reassured foreign CEOs, including Apple, Pfizer, and Mastercard, about China's economic potential. Apple also announced a $99 million clean energy fund in China to expand its clean energy capacity.
Bayer:
Ordered to pay $2.1 billion in damages after a jury found its Roundup weed killer caused cancer.
Boeing Co:
Boeing and Airbus are preparing for increased production of next-generation jets. They are researching lighter materials and robotic assembly for future aircraft replacements.
Chevron Corp:
CEO Michael Wirth received $32.7 million in compensation for 2024, a 23.4% increase from the previous year. Chevron also announced plans to lay off 15-20% of its workforce by 2026 as part of cost-cutting efforts.
Coty Inc:
Coty sold its 20% stake in Kim Kardashian's SKKN beauty brand to SKIMS, consolidating both businesses. Coty will use the proceeds to reduce debt and invest in its broader brand portfolio.
Darden Restaurants:
Stephens raised the target price to $178 from $175, based on the company's strong operational execution and guidance for 2025 same-store sales.
Dentalcorp Holdings Ltd:
CIBC raised its target price for Dentalcorp Holdings to C$13 from C$11.5, citing the company's stable business model and in-line fourth-quarter results.
FedEx Corp:
Daiwa Capital Markets lowered the target price to $240 from $285, reflecting updated management guidance and a slower start to 2026.
Ford Motor Co:
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched a preliminary probe into 1.3 million Ford F-150 trucks over issues of unexpected gear downshifts and rear-wheel lock-up, raising safety concerns.
Lennar Corp:
Barclays cut the target price to $110 from $121, citing near-term earnings pressure as the company focuses on a cash generation strategy.
Meta Platforms Inc:
Meta and OpenAI are in talks with Reliance Industries to expand AI offerings in India, including the potential distribution of ChatGPT and reducing subscription fees.
Rapid7 Inc:
Rapid7 is nearing a settlement with activist investor Jana Partners to boost share prices and possibly explore a sale.
Redfin Corp:
JPMorgan raised the target price to $12.5 from $7 after Rocket Companies' acquisition offer for Redfin at $12.50 per share.
Target Corp & Walmart Inc:
Walmart and Target are negotiating with suppliers over proposed price hikes due to rising costs from tariffs, leading to acrimonious discussions on how much to increase prices without alienating consumers.
Tesla Inc:
Tesla is preparing to launch its Full Self-Driving (FSD) feature in China after receiving regulatory approval. Meanwhile, protests were held in Washington over Elon Musk's workforce reduction plans.
United States Steel Corp:
Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel are negotiating with the U.S. government on a potential acquisition deal, which could strengthen the U.S. steel industry.
Volkswagen:
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CTV News
36 minutes ago
- CTV News
World shares are mixed as markets shrug at latest China-U.S. trade deal
People walk in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Thursday, June 12, 2025, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) TOKYO — World shares were trading mixed early Thursday after Wall Street's rally stalled, as investors appeared not to react much to the results of the latest round of China-U.S. trade talks. Germany's DAX lost 0.7% to 23,787.77 and the CAC 40 in Paris slipped 0.4% to 7,744.41. Britain's FTSE 100 was nearly unchanged at 8,863.07. The futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were down 0.3%. In Asian trading, Japan's Nikkei 225 lost 0.5% to 38,216.06. Hong Kong's Hang Seng sank 0.5% to 24,234.80, while the Shanghai Composite index edged 0.1% lower to 3,404.66. In South Korea, the Kospi gained 0.9% to 2,933.44, while Australia's S&P/ASX 200 edged 0.1% higher to 8,604.50. Taiwan's Taiex lost 0.8%. On Wednesday, the S&P 500 fell 0.3% to 6,022.24 for its first loss in four days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was virtually unchanged at 42,865.77 after edging down by 1 point. The Nasdaq composite slipped 0.5% to 3,400.30. Several Big Tech stocks led the way lower, and a 1.9% drop for Apple was the heaviest weight on the market. It's been listless this week after unveiling several modest upcoming changes to the software that runs its devices. The action was stronger in the bond market, where Treasury yields eased after a report suggested President Donald Trump's tariffs are not pushing inflation much higher, at least not yet. U.S. consumers had to pay prices for food, gasoline and other costs of living that were 2.4% higher overall in May than a year earlier. That was up from April's 2.3% inflation rate, but it wasn't as bad as the 2.5% that Wall Street was expecting. A fear has been that Trump's wide-ranging tariffs could ignite an acceleration in inflation, just when it had seemed to get nearly all the way back to the Federal Reserve's 2% target from more than 9% three summers ago. It hasn't happened, though economists warn it may take months more to feel the full effect of Trump's tariffs. Trump said Wednesday that China will supply rare-earth minerals and magnets to the United States, while his government will allow Chinese students into U.S. universities in a deal that still needs an agreement by him and by China's leader. Trump also said that 'President XI and I are going to work closely together to open up China to American Trade. This would be a great WIN for both countries!!!' Investors are still hoping for a more sweeping trade deal that would ease tensions between the world's two largest economies. Hopes for such deals between the United States and countries around the world have been one of the main reasons the S&P 500 has charged nearly all the way back to its all-time high after dropping roughly 20% below a couple months ago. Without them, the fear is that Trump's high tariffs could drive the economy into a recession while pushing inflation higher. The S&P 500 is now sitting 2% below its record. Tesla swung between gains and losses before finishing with a rise of 0.1% to continue its shaky run. It's been recovering much of its big losses taken last week after Elon Musk's relationship with Trump imploded, which in turn raised fears about a loss of business for the electric-vehicle company. Musk on Wednesday backed away from some of his earlier comments and said they went 'too far.' In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.41% from 4.47% late Tuesday. Shorter-term yields, which more closely track expectations for what the Federal Reserve will do with overnight interest rates, fell more. Wednesday's better-than-expected reading on inflation raised expectations along Wall Street that the Fed could cut its main interest rate at least twice by the end of the year. In other dealings early Thursday, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 46 cents to US$67.69 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, shed 53 cents to $69.24 per barrel. The U.S. dollar slipped to 143.90 Japanese yen from 144.60 yen. The euro rose to $1.1518 from $1.1487. Elaine Kurtenbach, The Associated Press
National Observer
an hour ago
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Canada's Conservatives still aren't serious about housing
He was so close to getting it. Jacob Mantle, the newly-elected thirty-something Conservative MP for York-Durham, rose in the House of Commons on Tuesday to make a point about housing costs. 'Oxford Economics reports that Toronto's housing market ranks among the worst in the world for affordability. At the same time, mortgage delinquency rates in Toronto are higher than at any time during the pandemic. The financial burden is suffocating the next generation of homebuyers.' But Mantle wasn't actually interested in proposing solutions to that problem. Instead, he wanted to whine about the fact that the Carney government isn't going to table a budget until the fall, which the government has defended on the basis that it will be better able to account for the fallout from Donald Trump's tariffs by then. And despite his supposed concern over housing, Mantle was dismissive of the government's plan to embrace and scale up modular housing in Canada. 'My generation refuses to live in a shipping container,' Mantle said. For what it's worth, I suspect many members of his generation (and mine) would be happy to live in the sort of modified shipping containers that are being designed and built right now, including the ones in his own city. But modular housing is so much more than just the use and conversion of shipping containers. It's an entirely new approach to homebuilding, one that uses factories and their inherent economies of scale to drive down costs. They can be one or two-storey, single or multi-family, and configured in any number of layouts and sizes. In an environment where driving down construction costs is a nearly existential issue for Mantle's generation, you'd think he would be more open to new ideas and economic innovation — especially when it promises to use more Canadian materials and labour. Then again, if you've been paying close attention to the Conservative Party of Canada's approach to this issue, his behaviour was entirely predictable. Under Pierre Poilievre's leadership, the party and its MPs have repeatedly highlighted the very real problem of rising housing costs in Canada and the disproportionate impacts they have on younger people. But when it comes to actual solutions to that problem — ones, at least, that don't involve cutting taxes or regulations and assuming the market will magically solve the problem it has helped create — those same Conservatives either disappear into the metaphorical bushes or come out on the other side of the issue. In Calgary, for example, opposition to a city-wide measure to increase affordability and density while reducing sprawl came mostly from Conservative-leaning councilors like Dan McLean, Peter Demong and Sean Chu, with some conspicuous cheerleading work coming from federal Conservative MP Greg McLean. In British Columbia, provincial Conservative party leader John Rustad decided to go to bat for the very 'gatekeepers' standing in the way of new housing that Poilievre had repeatedly promised he would eliminate. Even in Ontario, where Conservative politicians have been more visibly and vocally on-side with pro-supply measures, the results of the Ford government's efforts have been underwhelming, to say the least. We are not in a moment where we can afford to reflexively turn our noses up at potential solutions. And yet, Conservative politicians like Mantle seem determined to find fault in every proposed approach that doesn't flatter their own pre-existing ideological and political biases towards cutting taxes and reducing government involvement. Modular housing will not be, in and of itself, the solution to a problem that has been building for more than two decades. But that's only because nothing on its own will, or could, be the solution. The Carney government has embraced modular housing as a way to lower costs and improve affordability in Canada's housing market. Canada's Conservatives, on the other hand, seem determined to miss the mass timber for the trees. Instead, we need every possible lever being pulled right now, from regulatory reform and improved operating efficiencies to direct government involvement, procurement, and even development. Mantle is right that the status quo has failed his generation. But he's wrong to indignantly oppose a good-faith effort at challenging and changing it, and all the more so as he pretends to speak on behalf of an entire generation. We can only hope that his party and its online proxies don't decide to turn modular housing into this year's iteration of the 15-minute city and throw a self-evidently good and decent idea into the stew of online conspiracies it always seems to have at low boil. Yes, that might feed the eternally hungry appetites of their increasingly online political base. But it won't do anything to address the problem Conservatives like Mantle claim to care about. At some point, Canadians may conclude that they're not actually all that interested in solving it.
National Observer
an hour ago
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Canada risks squandering multi-billion-dollar critical minerals market without 'swift action': report
Canada risks squandering a $12-billion-a-year domestic market for minerals and metals key to the country's energy transition by 2040 if the federal government cannot attract the massive investments needed to propel development of copper, nickel, lithium, graphite, cobalt and rare earth element mines, a new report has concluded. The study out today by the Canadian Climate Institute (CCI), a think tank, found Canada's place in the global critical minerals market would be jeopardized unless at least $30 billion in capital flowed into the country's mining sector over the next 15 years to meet growing minerals demand driven by technologies ranging from EV batteries to wind turbines and power infrastructure. 'Securing Canada's place in the global critical minerals race requires swift action to unlock public and private investment that can power Canada's energy transition with these building blocks of clean technologies,' said the CCI's director of clean growth, Marisa Beck, who was lead author of the report. "We are at a phase globally in critical minerals market development where the market is reorganizing itself [against the backdrop of the energy transition] and in the midst of major geopolitical and trade upheavals, so it is the perfect time to establish policies to support Canada's mining sector and supply chain,' she added, speaking with Canada's National Observer. To meet skyrocketing worldwide demand for these six key critical minerals – which the International Energy Agency, an industry watchdog, forecasts to reach $770 billion by 2040 – investment in Canadian mines would have to rise to $65 billion by the end of the next decade. Facilitating this investment, according to the report, which comes ahead of next week's G7 leaders summit in Alberta where critical minerals is one of three topics topping the agenda, will require: agreements between government and the private sector sharing the financial burden of capital investments in critical mineral mines; more funding for Indigenous communities to partner on these projects; strengthened environmental regulations that reduce risks and liabilities for neighbouring communities; and streamlined mining project reviews and decision-making processes. "Securing Canada's place in the global critical minerals race requires swift action to unlock investment that can power our energy transition with these building blocks of clean technologies,' says the Canadian Climate Institute's Marisa Beck. 'We are seeing very fast progress in a lot of the technologies that will need these critical minerals, so it is important to focus on the high-level areas of mine development, but we also recognize that the processing side and the high-value manufacturing side must all be considered going forward,' said Beck. 'But this was outside the scope of this report.' Marilyn Spink, director of operations at the Canadian Critical Minerals and Metals Alliance, an industry advocacy group, warned that the report could entrench 'old-world thinking' by government and industry on new mining sector development that focuses on resource development but 'doesn't sufficiently consider demand-pull,' where future market strategy is more demand-determined rather than supply-led. 'What is Canada going after?' 'What is Canada going after? Materials enable the economy; critical minerals do not. We need to intelligently decide who the customers for these critical minerals will be — EV battery-makers, sure, but think about the wider clean-tech space, energy infrastructure, robotics and so on,' she said, speaking with Canada's National Observer. 'Then decide which critical minerals you mine and where you mine them, because then you can build the midstream facilities to process them and then add real high-value manufacturing that will lead to economic development and job creation.' She cautioned that without following this strategy, Canada could fall prey to the 'resource curse,' when a country 'fails to leverage a natural resource well because it doesn't add manufacturing value and this results in slowly eroding the wider economy.' In a bid to ramp up mining of critical minerals in a global market dominated in recent decades by China, Ottawa in 2022 announced $3.8 billion in federal funding to finance geoscience and exploration, mineral processing, manufacturing and recycling applications, as well as research and development. And last year, Canada's critical minerals list was updated with three new materials, bringing the total to 34. But only a handful of critical minerals mining projects have gained traction in the past year, with developments in BC, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec recently receiving a financial boost from the $1.5 billion Canadian Critical Minerals Infrastructure Fund.
