TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index ended lower on Tuesday as investors took a wait-and-see approach to a looming deal between the United States and Iran to end the war.
“The market’s fairly quiet today,” said Jillian Bryan, senior investment adviser and senior portfolio manager at TD Wealth. “People are waiting to see if the U.S. can perhaps announce something in the Middle East with Iran.”
The anticipation of a deal drove down crude oil prices — weighing on the Canadian energy sector, which makes up a prominent part of the Canadian markets, she said.
The S&P/TSX composite index was down 177.02 points at 34,653.87, pulled lower by broad-based losses.
Oil prices have been at the centre of the action for financial markets since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in late February. During the ensuing war, Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz to most oil tankers, keeping crude supply bottlenecked in the Persian Gulf instead of flowing to customers worldwide. That in turn has made oil prices highly volatile and added inflationary pressures around the world.
The July crude oil contract was down US$2.71 at US$93.89 per barrel.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 118.02 points at 50,461.68. The S&P 500 index was up 45.65 points at 7,519.12, while the Nasdaq composite was up 312.21 points at 26,656.18.
“One of the big movers today would be Micron,” Bryan said. Semiconductor manufacturer Micron Technology leaped more than 20 per cent to top $900 and was the strongest force lifting the S&P 500 after analysts at UBS more than tripled their 12-month price target for the stock, to $1,625 from $535. The tech company also crossed a trillion-dollar market valuation.
Bryan said space stocks were also pushing the U.S. markets higher on Tuesday as Elon Musk’s SpaceX gears up for its highly anticipated initial public offering in a few weeks.
“You’ve had everything space-related kind of go a little crazy,” she said. Other big names in the space industry, Rocket Lab Corp. and Redwire Corp. saw a double-digit jump in stock price, while shares of space tourism company Virgin Galactic Holdings were also up.
Bryan said as SpaceX makes its debut in the markets, it could lead to a lot of volatile trading.
Ahead of the earnings bonanza from all of Canada’s Big Six banks this week, Bryan said she’s not expecting anything surprising, but at the same time, “they’re sort of topping out from a valuation perspective.”
“One of the ways you can value bank stocks is by the price-to-book value,” she said, which compares a company’s market value to its net worth or assets.
Bryan said most banks seem like they’re already at their all-time high price-to-book value.
The Canadian dollar traded for 72.40 cents US compared with 72.44 cents US on Monday.
The June gold contract was down US$20.90 at US$4,502.30 an ounce.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 26, 2026.
Companies in this story: (TSX: GSPTSE, TSX: CADUSD)
— With files from The Associated Press.
