TORONTO – Stocks in Canada and the U.S. rose on Thursday, as easing oil prices brought some calm to financial markets.
A day earlier, stock markets fell and oil prices rose as comments from U.S. President Donald Trump raised doubts about the temporary truce in the war with Iran.
“Markets still believe that the U.S. is motivated to end the conflict in Iran. They’re looking for an off-ramp, so I think that’s why people … they’re not reacting as though this is catastrophic for risk assets,” said Lesley Marks, chief investment officer of equities at Mackenzie Investments.
The S&P/TSX composite index was up 264.65 points at 35,200.45.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 139.02 points at 52,487.41. The S&P 500 index was up 60.93 points at 7,543.64, while the Nasdaq composite was up 336.24 points at 26,206.89.
In the oil market, prices gave back much of their gains from the day before. The August crude oil contract was down US$1.44 at US$72.08 per barrel.
The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, fell 2.2 per cent to US$76.30. That’s down from US$78.02 the day before though still above its US$71.80 price from the end of last week.
The worry is that a return to full-blown war between the U.S. and Iran will block oil tankers from the Strait of Hormuz and prevent the delivery of crude from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide. That could worsen inflation, which economists expected would ease with oil prices, and in turn force the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks to raise interest rates.
On Wednesday, Trump said the ceasefire with Iran was over, but he also said that the latest back-and-forth fighting would not result in “long-term” military action, raising uncertainty about just what will happen.
Meanwhile on Wall Street, Micron Technology’s climb of 4.5 per cent was one of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500.
Such stocks have become some of Wall Street’s most influential after growing so big in the euphoria around AI. But AI stocks have also come under pressure recently because of worries their prices shot too high and that AI may not create enough productivity and profits to make all the investments in chips and data centres worth it.
“It has been a positive day across the board, both in Canada and the U.S., and one of the things that we’ve seen has been a bit of a bounce back in the semiconductor names, which had been trading a little bit lower at the start of this month or over the last week or so,” Marks said.
“They seem to have found a little bit of a bounce here, and I think overall that is helping risk-on sentiment.”
On Friday, Statistics Canada will release its jobs report for the month of June.
A Reuters poll of economists is expecting Canada added 10,000 jobs last month, enough to keep the unemployment rate steady at 6.6 per cent.
In May, the Canadian economy added 88,000 jobs as the unemployment rate fell 0.3 percentage points to 6.6 per cent.
Friday’s jobs figures are the last major economic data to be released before the Bank of Canada’s next interest rate decision next week.
“We’ve had some mixed signals with both weak and strong GDP data, but fairly good jobs data more recently. So, Canadians will be looking at that data to try and understand what the Bank of Canada’s next move could be,” Marks said.
The Canadian dollar traded for 70.58 cents US compared with 70.55 cents US on Wednesday.
The August gold contract was up US$58.40 at US$4,140.80 an ounce.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 9, 2026.
— With files from The Associated Press
Companies in this story: (TSX: GSPTSE, TSX: CADUSD)
