TORONTO – Canadian and U.S. markets made gains on Friday after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs imposed under an emergency powers law.
John Zechner, chairman and lead equity manager at J. Zechner Associates, said equity markets were “climbing a wall of worry” on Friday.
“It was sort of expected that they might vote (the tariffs) down … and it’s just interesting the market almost seems immune to this kind of stuff now,” Zechner said.
After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Trump’s use of an emergency legal tool to realign global trade, Trump said he will sign an executive order to impose a 10 per cent global tariff.
Heading into the day, the main event for markets had seemed to be discouraging reports showing slowing U.S. economic growth and accelerating inflation. They found a relatively muted response from investors.
“That’s a bad combination; growth is a little bit slower, but inflation is still high, which just makes it harder for the U.S. Fed to cut rates. So suddenly, rate cuts are less on the table or maybe pushed back a little bit,” Zechner said.
Traders are still betting that the U.S. Federal Reserve will lower rates at least twice this year, according to data from CME Group. Some shifted bets for the timing of when the cuts could begin to slightly later in the summer.
Lower U.S. interest rates would give the American economy and investment prices a boost, but they also risk worsening inflation. Fed officials said at their last meeting that they want to see inflation fall further before they would support cutting rates further.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 230.81 points at 49,625.97. The S&P 500 index was up 47.62 points at 6,909.51, while the Nasdaq composite was up 203.34 points at 22,886.07.
The S&P/TSX composite index was up 222.53 points at 33,817.51, lifted by tech stocks.
Zechner said that generally, technology stocks had been oversold, particularly for software companies, on fears about a worst-case scenario regarding disruptions from AI.
“They got oversold, and they had a bit of a bounce,” he said.
Looking ahead to next week, he said earnings from Canada’s big banks will likely be the main driver of the market.
“I think the expectation is they’ll deliver good numbers again. The economic data has probably been better than expected, especially when we saw in the middle of last year (that) capital markets were strong, so the investment banking side will do well, trading should do well,” Zechner said.
The Canadian dollar traded for 73.05 cents US compared with 73.01 cents US on Thursday.
The April crude oil contract was up eight cents US at US$66.48 per barrel. The April gold contract was up US$83.50 at US$5,080.90 an ounce.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 20, 2026.
— With files from The Associated Press.
Companies in this story: (TSX:GSPTSE, TSX:CADUSD)
