Tariff war pressures markets for the week

Allan Tong Posted On March 7, 2025

Markets on Friday modestly climbed, but not enough to rescue them from a negative week. Blame tariffs. Trumps’s latest proclamation is threatening Canada with heavy tariffs on dairy and lumber, perhaps as soon as today. The ever-changing situation has triggered gridlock on Wall and Bay streets. On Friday, the Dow and Nasdaq both advanced over 0.5%, while the S&P and TSX gained around 0.7%. For the week, the TSX was relatively resilient, down 2.5%, while the Dow sank 2.3%, the S&P fell more than 3% and the tech-laded Nasdaq slid nearly 3.5%.

Once more, Nvidia was the most-active name, advancing 1.92%, followed by Palantir which rebounded 5.53%. Meanwhile, Broadcom rallied 8.64%, Walgreens 7.45% and Hewlett-Packard tanked 11.97%. In Toronto, Suncor rose 3.32% as energy led nearly all sectors higher, along with dividend-paying telcos and utilities. Celestica rebounded 7.65%, Fortuna jumped 6.65%, Lundin Gold 6.15%, AltaGas popped 3.8% on earnings and MDA Space soared 17.73%. In commodities, gold was flat at US$2,911, WTI crude climbed to US$67.05 after a difficult week, and Bitcoin slipped nearly US$3,000 to US$86,900. The U.S. 10-year inched to 4.31%.