are expected<\/a> to keep interest rates steady.<\/p>\nIn Canada, investors are getting results from Canadian National Railway Co., Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd., Alamos Gold Inc., Brookfield Infrastructure Partners LP, Capital Power Corp., GFL Environmental Inc., Kinross Gold Corp., West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. and Whitecap Resources Inc.<\/p>\n
On Wall Street, markets are watching earnings from Alphabet Inc., Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc., Meta Platforms Inc., AstraZeneca PLC, AbbVie Inc., TotalEnergies SE, Qualcomm Inc. and UBS AG.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us, earnings are the most important part of the story right now,\u201d said Kate Moore, chief investment officer at Citi Wealth. First-quarter \u201cearnings are tracking year-over-year growth and climbing,\u201d she \u200bsaid.<\/p>\n
Overseas, the pan-European STOXX 600 was down 0.34 per cent in morning trading. Britain\u2019s FTSE 100 slid 0.6 per cent, Germany\u2019s DAX eased 0.17 per cent and France\u2019s CAC 40 gave back 0.6 per cent.<\/p>\n
In Asia, Japan\u2019s Nikkei was closed, while Hong Kong\u2019s Hang Seng closed 1.68 per cent higher. <\/p>\n
Commodities<\/p>\n
Oil prices were on the rise, extending a multiday \u200brally, on media reports the U.S. will extend \u200cits blockade of Iranian ports, likely prolonging supply disruptions from the key Middle East producing region.<\/p>\n
Brent crude futures gained 3.2 per cent to US$114.80, \u200bclimbing for an eighth day. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures rose 3.5 per cent to US$103.50 a barrel<\/p>\n
\u201cThe recent rise in oil prices \u200chas been driven \u200bby the Strait blockade. \u200cIf [U.S. President Donald] Trump is prepared to extend the blockade, supply disruptions would worsen further and \u200bcontinue to push oil prices higher,\u201d said Yang An, \u2060an analyst at Haitong Futures.<\/p>\n
In other commodities, spot gold was down 0.4 per cent to US$4,574.26 an \u200bounce after falling to its lowest level since April 2 in the previous session. U.S. gold futures for June delivery fell 0.4 per cent to US$4,587.70.<\/p>\n
Currencies and bonds<\/p>\n
The Canadian dollar weakened against its U.S. counterpart.<\/p>\n
The day range on the loonie was 73.02 US cents to 73.14 US cents in early trading. The Canadian dollar was up about 1.38 per cent against the greenback over the past month. <\/p>\n
The U.S. dollar index, which weighs the greenback against a group of currencies, climbed 0.09 per cent to 98.73. The U.S. dollar traded at $1.3685. <\/p>\n
The euro declined 0.1 per cent to US$1.1701. The British pound dropped 0.13 per cent to US$1.3499. <\/p>\n
In bonds, the yield on the U.S. 10-year note was last up at 4.363 per cent.<\/p>\n
Economic news<\/p>\n
Euro zone economic and consumer confidence<\/p>\n
Germany\u2019s CPI<\/p>\n
8:30 a.m. ET: U.S. durable and core orders for March. The Street expects month-over-month increases of 0.5 per cent for both.<\/p>\n
8:30 a.m. ET: U.S. goods trade deficit for March (first reading).<\/p>\n
8:30 a.m. ET: U.S. wholesale and retail inventories for March.<\/p>\n
8:30 a.m. ET: U.S. housing starts for March.<\/p>\n
8:30 a.m. ET: U.S. building permits for March.<\/p>\n
9:45 a.m. ET: Bank of Canada\u2019s policy announcement and the release of its Monetary Policy Report with Governor Tiff Macklem\u2019s press conference to follow.<\/p>\n
2 p.m. ET: U.S. Fed announcement with Chair Jerome Powell\u2019s press briefing to follow.<\/p>\n
With Reuters and The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Equities Global markets were muted as attention turned to interest-rate policy decisions by the Bank of Canada and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1634,17,1635,1627,1629,1630,1632,1636,1448,1637,1631,1628,1633,818],"class_list":{"0":"post-24349","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-bonds","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-canadian-dollar","11":"tag-dow-jones","12":"tag-equities","13":"tag-futures","14":"tag-gold","15":"tag-loonie","16":"tag-nasdaq","17":"tag-newnewsletter","18":"tag-oil","19":"tag-sd","20":"tag-silver","21":"tag-tsx"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}