Market Insights

[music] >> Hello I'm Greg Bonnell and welcome to MoneyTalk Live, brought to you by TD Direct Investing.

Coming up on today show.

TD Securities' Chris Wheelan will give us his view of the future passive rates and inflation after the US Federal Reserve signalled more hikes ahead.

TD Asset Management's Ben Gossett will take us through why investors may be missing the big picture about what's happening in the markets right now. And Hussein Allidina gives us his current outlook on the commodity sector.

Plus today's WebBroker education segment features Nugwa Haruna showing us how you can research preferred shares using the platform. Before all that let's get you an update on the markets starting right here on Bay Street at home with the TSX Composite Index.

It's been an interesting day.

Crude oil, now we have amended American benchmark crew down one of 1/3%. A little bit of a bumpy ride for crude.

Right now still holding in positive territory on Bay Street, pretty modest.

Let's call that 40 points, 1/5 of a percent.

But we are noticing some downward pressure on the price of cold today in the wake of the US jobs reports.

It is putting pressure on some of the big old names, Barrick down the 3 1/2%.

Cenovus was supposed to be an example of a stock making gains.

2491, it is still 7%. Now, south of the border we had some disappointing earningswith some of the biggest names in tech.

Stronger-than-expected, the markets are down but they are actually flirting to breakeven territory.

the tech heavy NASDAQ, actually modestly in positive territory right now.

It seems investors at least for some of the names are seeing through the disappointing quarter. I'm thinking about Apple. Those shares right now, even though it was a disappointing quarter behind them, investors are looking through that.

Right now Apple up a little more than three to quarter percent. And that's a market update.

Okay so it has been corporate earnings this week. The Fed but we did get a late market report out of the United States on the number coming in.

Far stronger-than-expected. Our Anthony Okolie joins us now with all the details.

What a jobs report compared to expectations.

>> You look at the expectations, that's higher than what we saw in December, 260,000 unemployment rates falls to the lowest in 53 years. This was quite a shock to investors. I think coming into this, there were hopes that the Fed would soften its rates policy with the sign of job market slowing. But we certainly didn't see that with this number.

> We heard from Jerome Powell on Wednesday, we saw market rallies and he simply said "we are hiking today.

We still need to go further into restrictive territory.

We see the need for further hikes going forward. Hikes, plural." Everything is on the table now.

Watching the incoming data, it makes you wonder even though you have a stronger-than-expected jobs report, will it change anything you said?

Saying we will continue to hike and have to further restrict to get inflation down?

> The markets believe that he could keep interest rates higher for longer.

That's not the case. Even the bond markets, we are seeing rising yields. Not quite yet behind us. Bond yields surge, up about 14 basis points, hovering around 4.2%.

The ten-year yield rose as well. That again as indicating the Fed needs to keep rates elevated to control inflation.

>> Yesterday Chris Whalen was on the show above from TD Securities. I asked if there was a scenario where we get inflation under control with these and present rate hikes which most parts of the market, are more than behind us. We will get near the end for the Fed. The Bank of Canada has already said they will pause. But can we get inflation down?

The job market doesn't have to suffer horribly?

That's the Goldilocks scenario.

Clearly the S&P 500, the NASDAQ, are just trying to figure out what to do with this information.

>> That's the balance. If they pause on rate hikes too early, that can cause inflation to pick up again and push rates too high. That could lead to a recession. So that is certainly the balancing acts.

The Fed hitting that Goldilocks in some time. But certainly, that is the hope that we can see this year.

But again, I think, as you mentioned, the markets so far, the reaction has been somewhat muted.

Still heading for a winning week this week. Continuing the January rally.

I think there's a sense that we are probably closer near the end of the rate hiking cycle as opposed to the middle.

And that's why potentially you are not seeing markets collapsing.

>> Fascinating times. Thanks Anthony.

>> My pleasure.

>> Anthony Okolie, he will be back later in the show talking about housing markets in Toronto and in Vancouver.

You don't want to miss that.

Investors of course are getting clear signals from central banks. That nearly a year of aggressive rate hikes are pulling inflation in the right direction. So what does that mean for the path of rates and the economy?

Chris Wheelan, Senior Canada Rates Strategist at TD Securities join me earlier to discuss.

>> Taking a pause at face value. They are pausing.

Nervously at face value.

We are taking them at face value and they are pausing.

And we go forward to the Fed yesterday, it wasn't easy to discern what kind of meeting that was at first.

When you look at the market reaction, we have bonds pushing lower.

This has a mission accomplished. We were doing pretty good here feeling. The economy is showing us that the stock market, the economy might have a bit more left in the tank to hold up for longer.

I think everyone is kind of scratching their heads on "are we going into a recession or not? Will it be a bad recession?" I think we are all confused on how that will evolve.

I think the bond market right now is pushing yields lower and I think that bond market is reading as the Fed is shifting to more data dependency. They nodded towards this. I think that's why we are seeing a large reaction in yields yesterday that is holding to today.

And with some follow-through.

So I think that the hikes are working. Inflation is slowing down.

I think it is becoming consensus and I think with good reason. Consensus isn't always a fade. I think with good reason, inflation is going to fall and I think that for now, we will take that as a healthy sign.

Things are okay for now.

>> The Fed did signal that even though Chairman Powell used the word disinflationary, we did say there is more work to be done. They didn't give that same signal of the Bank of Canada.

So we will sit here and figure things out, they said.

They will have to do a little more on rates to the upside. So, based on what we are seeing and based on some of the data coming in, I won't get your prediction but when does the Fed consider it safe to move to the sidelines?

One? Tomorrow?

>> We are in the 1 to 2 more camp right now.

This sensitivity to data picking up, we have a lower sensitivity to data in Canada because of the next month or two, because of the bank Bank of Canada has set pause. So they will take stock of what the next two months looks like without a lot of backward -looking data.… Bank of Canada taking stock in the US. A bit more data sensitive in the US because of a big shock lower in data is more risk of one or done. And then, the big beats on data as it shifted to may be more than that. So, I think there is a high data dependency scenario in the US right now. A lower one in Canada, I think that is kind of the regime we are heading into over the next month or two.

So I think it really depends on your kind of view. If we look at the stock market, as the data holds up longer. So that's favouring our 1 to 2 more scenario versus an imminent done. So that's kind of where we are as a strategy team.

>> It's clear from the monthly reports that we do have inflation moving in the right direction which is lower.

Although still high.

We've heard as much from the Fed and other central banks. What could ignite inflation again?

After taking a pause, the central bank saying oh, we have more to go.

>> I think the economy holding up longer, as we are seeing, the stock market nodding towards, just general strength in the economy can make it difficult for inflation to push lower. Then, I think the other thing is the oil story.

Oil is a big driver in the inflation equation.

Not necessarily a big driver on its own but it tends to be very highly correlated to inflation.

So if you have a larger rally in oil, on the China reopening story, the economy holding up for a longer story, reserves being drawn down to a large extent, a lot of scenarios that they talk about on your show often that could drive that further.

That's kind of your devil top in inflation. That's at play. I think right now, whether you were confused right now or not, I think the bond market is getting a sign that it's okay to jump back into bonds. Stock markets liking that yields are probably starting to get Doubt and we are unsure about the economy but we are not overly scared about the economy. I think that's why were getting the market reaction we are getting.

>> Fascinating through all this. Aggressive rate hikes to try to bring down inflation to call the economy.

So many central bankers saying "we need to see some pain in the labour market." We really haven't seen that pain so it starts to make me think can we actually get a cooling of inflation to that target range without severe damage to the leg labour market?

In those two things coexist?

>> I think that's the question right now. Can you have this sustained in the economy where it's at. Or are we coming from an overly strong point in the labour market?

We are seeing layoffs in the headlines but we are also starting to understand that those laid off are starting to get a job quite quickly. And so we have layoffs from this economy slowing or concerns about it and then you have a tight job market to replace their job right away.

That is a dynamic we don't have a lot of recent historical precedence on.

Can they coexist?

It's hard to argue that they can't. It's hard to see how they can.

>> It's a tricky one!

>> I don't think that's an easy question to answer but I can see how they can coexist. One thing to understand is we are coming from a pretty high level of economic activity. A recession is a rate of change.

So when you can go from a high level to a medium level and still have a recession, I think in that context, why is the stock market so positive right now?

That may be a positioning story that a lot of people might be overly defensive and caught up in right now.

That also may be telling us that economic activity might slow and not be so dire, deep recession job losses of that dark gloomy picture.

Maybe they can coexist and is a decrease in economic opportunity.

Maybe a soft landing is in play.

You know, these positive economic trends can go on for a lot longer than we think sometimes.

>> That was Chris Wheelan, Senior Canada Rates Strategist at TD Securities.

Now let's get you an update on some of the top stories in the world of business and see other markets are trading.

MegaCap tech stocks are in the spotlight today with concerns about an economic slow down front and centre and earnings report.

Apple, Alphabet and Amazon are all handed in quarterly results after the closing bells yesterday.

Slowing growth is pressuring digital ad sales, e-commerce, cloud computing and phone sales across the tech sector.

A different reaction in some of the names.

We have Amazon down and Apple up a couple of percent.

Starbucks, they missed earnings estimates in its latest quarter as the COVID outbreak in China weighed on its business. The coffee chain says the spike in cases resulted in a dramatic decline in consumer activity in December.

Starbucks CEO says they are seeing a rebound and foot traffic and he's standing by plans to have a 9000 locations in China by the end of 2025.

A little shy of 4%.

OPENTEXT says revenues from its cloud business were up 12% of the most recent quarter compared to the same period last year. That help the Waterloo Ontario Tech company beat earnings estimates with overall sales up to .4%.

OPENTEXT recently closed its acquisition of British software firm Micro Focus.

And now the main benchmark indexes Canada… The south of the border, the American sifting through all those corporate earnings, we will hear from the Fed this weekTrying to decide which direction to push this market in. Right now modestly negative to the tune of 12 points in the S&P 500.

>> January of course was a moneymaking month for stocks. With warnings from companies about some potential pain ahead.

Earlier I spoke with Ben Gossack, Portfolio Manager at TD Asset Management who says investors may be missing the bigger picture if you're not looking beyond those negative headlines.

Here's our conversation.

>> I thought today, you know, weep beginning of the year, over the holiday break, so I know it's a slow January.

Talked about what I did over the holiday break.

I analysed charts.

People went to Hawaii and travelled and I thought I'd sit by the fire and analysed charts.

We are finally getting a bearish tone from management taking down guidance and expectations. There is still a bearish tone in terms of industrial positioning.

Having said that, what I did over the holidays going through charts, I saw some interesting developments underneath, let's say, the S&P 500 or the TSX. One of the first ones that really surprised me was looking at homebuilders.

If you read any newspaper, you can watch housing, something very personal for everyone.

The headlines could not be more atrocious. So, in the US, 30 year mortgages… I think they peaked over 7%.

Around 6 1/2%.

That's pretty expensive for the marginal mortgage. New home sales are down, existing home sales are contracting for the past 10/4. So it couldn't get any worse for housing. Yet, when I look at housing stocks and companies in the housing sector, the worse it got for them, relative to the S&P 500 was March 2022.

>> Really? Almost a year ago?

>> If you recall, it's in March that the Fed starts their hiking cycle. Now, if you look at two-year rates, it already imposed into financial conditions.

So they were already at 2%.

The Fed was just making the first set of hikes. But if you went long as a homebuilder, if you went long to Home Depot, and you shorted the market… You have an amazing attractive return.

Even though the headlines are getting worse and worse.

What that's telling me is that we factored in the slowdown.

The caveat is it could get worse.

It doesn't mean that it's smooth sailing in the housing sector. It just tells me that housing was one of the first to break.

It's one of the sectors that now has been improving against the market.

A bit of a reverse that we saw in 2021.

> That's fascinating in the housing. I think you have three more charts for us.

What is at next when telling us?

>> The next one, we move into sort of a risk on colour risk off.

We talked about how the tone is negative in positioning in terms of what management has to refer investors. Yet we look at risk off, risk on indicators, it's indicating risk on. One of the measures, again it's not prescriptive, but I looked at the discretionary sector versus the Staples sector.

I kind of look at the wants versus the needs.

One thing that I did in this particular chart is, you have to look at the discretionary sector on an equal weight basis.

You take it as it is, it's very dominated by Tesla and Amazon.

So the results you are looking at, basically is Tesla up or down or Amazon up or down. I won't tell you about discretionary as a whole.

And so, what were looking at is discretionary versus Staples. If it's up to the right, it means discretionary's performing. If the line is pulled down it means Staples are outperforming. This aligns well with the market. And so you can see there was a consolidation phase in 2022.

But if this was a tug-of-war, the beginning of this year poles towards discretionary.

So we have seen Staples underperform.

We have seen retail come back.

Born through a lot of the sort of, headwinds.

It's coinciding with the tone that we are seeing in the market in terms of +5% at the beginning of the year. I could do this for industrials versus Staples.

I would see the same tone that risk on his outperforming risk off.

>> Very interesting.

Let's get to the third chart right now. What we want to show the audience?

>> So I think this is about active and passive management. It's about how you're going to outperform the market. What were looking at is a tug-of-war between the equal weight version of the S&P 500 versus the traditional S&P 500 which is weighted based on market caps.

So companies like Apple, Microsoft, the bulk of the waiting inside the S&P 500. I'd say, I went back 10 years.

That's about a generation. Let's go back to 2013.

This chart poles to the bottom right.

Which means the traditional market S&P 500 has outperformed for almost 10 years.

So investors got very comfortable gravitating to… ETF's. If you want to outperform that you just go to the big market Companies and that's how we came up with monikers like saying. Facebook, Amazon Netflix Google and Apple.

FANGA.

What we've seen is a change in that trend. That equal weight is outperforming market.

What that means is it's a big opportunity for stocks.

So it does mean that you have to look beyond >> The passive ETF's are not gonna work.

>> It doesn't mean it can't work but there is an opportunity for now for active stock selections. When I talk to analysts, they are very excited and proposing a ton of new ideas. It's an opportunity for active managers to provide differentiation, show their clients and justify their management fees. So I think it's an exciting time.

>> One more picture to show the audience. What we have?

>> Okay, the final picture is the outperformance of the S&P 500 versus the rest of the world.

Again, we are looking at a tug-of-war contest between US markets and every other market.

So this has been the cleanest signal I've ever seen which is, up to the right, almost a 45« angle.

Let's call it the last 10 years.

You earned that it returns on your dollar in the US versus going on in Canada.

, Europe, Asia.

Again it goes back to large-cap companies pretty much tech dominated. That's what these markets lacked in the country.

So there is a change in trend.

And again, coinciding with that equal outperforming and we will see how long these trends persist.

But especially us in our global funds, that marginal dollar is going outside the US. It's going to Europe, it's going to Asia, there is a change in trend. So if people look at their global funds and said "why was it 80% US?" It's because the US had just dominated for so many years.

>> You put those four pictures together, what's the take away for the audience?

>> I think when it comes to active stock collections, this is the year to shine.

And then put on top of that, what I'm really seeing within the market is this opportunity. So it's very possible that the S&P 500, the TSX might be down this year as well as it was last year. But having said that, underneath the market, there is opportunities. We've seen semiconductors bottom, biotechnology bottom. We've seen housing bottom.

Many of the sectors that had crashed in 2021 are starting to outperform. The theme here of the opportunity.

>> That was Ben Gossack, Portfolio Manager at TD Asset Management. Let's get to our educational segment of the day.

If you're looking to do research on the fixed income space preferred shares are on the asset class you may consider.

To show us where we can find info on this space on the WebBroker platform, we are joined by Nugwa Haruna, Senior Client Education Instructor with TD Direct Investing.

Always good to see you Nugwa. Let's talk about preferred shares.

>> Always a pleasure being here Greg.

We will start off by talking about what exactly preferred shares are.

They are considered a hybrid product. That's because they have features of equities.

So if you hold a preferred share, you are considered a part owner of that company.

They also have features of fixed income products.

Preferred shareholders get preference when it comes to the receipt of dividends over common shareholders.

Investors who may be looking for some kind of fixed income payment, may consider including preferred shares into their portfolio.

There are different kinds of preferred shares. We have perpetual preferred shares, these are preferred shares that don't have maturity dates and they come with a fixed dividend rate. For investors who want some kind of fluctuation when it comes to preferred shares, the preferred shares like the rate reset, so the fixed rate reset preferred shares.

How those work is, depending on the prevailing interest rate, the dividends rate is set on those preferred shares and those are reviewed every five years. Now, there are other preferred shares like the floating preferred shares that actually have their dividend rates tied to whatever prime is.

Which means that investors may see their dividend rates change every quarter.

Finally, there is retractable he preferred shares.

These ones actually give both the issuer and the holder of these shares, the right to return those shares at a set price.

So if an investor is looking for a specific preferred share, they are able to use WebBroker to find them.

Let's hop into WebBroker and take a look. Once in WebBroker, if I have an idea whose preferred share I want to consider, I can click on "research".

Under investments, I'm going to click on "stocks". Once I'm on that page, I can pull up a specific company.

Let's say I want to find out if a specific company has preferred shares available. I put in the ticker. Here I see that with Royal Bank, for instance, I see the first two options are common shares.

But then I noticed there are other shares that have a.

pr or a.

pf.

I'll click on that.

If I want to see what that dividend yield is all I need to do is scroll down.

Once here, I will see what the dividend yield is for this specific preferred share.

I'll also see what the annual dividend rate is.

One thing I want to use besides preferred shares would be the volume. When it comes to the common share of a specific stock, you might find that stock trading in the millions every day.

But with preferred shares, you might find they don't have a lot of volume there.

These are considerations investors want to make sure they take into account because it can reduce your availability to get into a position or to exit a position when holding a preferred share.

>> Alright. Interesting stuff.

Great crime on preferred and different varieties of preferred.

We started with the company that we think "we think they have preferreds " what about companies that don't offer preferreds? How would you manage that?

>> Right now I view the company you want to pull up so I search for it but if I want to know the list of companies that offer preferred shares, there is a way to find them using WebBroker. We will go back to WebBroker.

Once there, we will go back to one of our very powerful tools, under research. We will go to "screeners".

This screeners tool is one that lets you filter for information that is important to you. So starting off, we will use a "stocks" filter and we will click on "screening " here.

We will clear every category we have and then create our own.

We will start off with the Canadian exchange. So we want the list of Canadian preferred shares. I'm going to click on "more criteria".

Under "company basics", I'm prepared and met with the option here and I will select preferred shares on this drop-down. Once I do that, I have 341 shares available.

Still quite a number.

I'm going to go "more criteria". Remember, we just talked about more volume in consideration what an investor is holding a preferred share. If an investor wants to find, let's say, preferred share that moves significant enough volume, it can also filter for that.

I'm going to filter for volume on a 90 day average. In this instance, I'm going to put at least 10,000 units traded on average in the last 90 days. So once I do that, it brings my total down to 46. I'll add one more filter here.

A lot of people who own preferred shares do this because of the dividend that is paid. Let's also add the dividend yield there.

In this instance, we'll just put a minimum of 4.5%.

So once I do that, I'll see that the number of shares available, now that meet that criteria is 42 preferred shares. I can scroll down, I can dig a little deeper into each of these preferred shares.

I could just go on here, go to an overview page to see a little more about each of these.

I can save this screeners so I can come back at a later time. All come appear and click "save".

Finally, once I've saved my screener I can save an alert to get my information anytime. Preferred shares to fall off that list and more preferred shares added to that list. So just a great way to keep track of the different preferred shares available to investors.

>> Very insightful. Great stuff is always Nugwa.

> Have a date have a great day Greg.

>> Our thanks to Nugwa Haruna, Senior Client Education Instructor TD Direct Investing.

Make sure to check out the Learning Center and WebBroker for more educational videos, live interactive master classes and upcoming webinars. Commodities have had a pretty good start to the year. Along with other risk assets. But will that path higher continue amid all this talk about slowing global growth? Hussein Allidina, Head of Commodities and TD Asset Management jointly to discuss this outlook for the space.

>> Clearly, you need to have demand growth and I think part of the reason why commodities and other risk assets have performed well into 2023 is because expectations of room demand activity in China is lifting expectations of the four balance and how tight things might be.

But of course, demand in the variability around demand and growth is a concern that tightens on the supply side. It's still very prevalent. We look at imagery balances.

They are softer today than they were three months ago.

Primarily because we haven't had weather. It doesn't feel that much this morning but we haven't had weather anywhere near normal and that has resulted in some softness in the balance. But when you take this more medium turn and you look through another end, Chinese is probably up 600, 800,000 barrels a day this year compared to last year when we contracted about 500 back 500,000 barrels a day. The S&P brought 500,000 barrels a day in the market. That likely doesn't happen again this day in this year. Russian production was very big last year.

… All those factors together, with robust or somewhat robust demands make tighter balance.

>> A longer term, there's been some interesting commentary.

British Petroleum, one of the global energy names coming out and actually talking about where they see oil demand in the years ahead. I think you pay pretty close attention to that earlier in the week. What you get from that?

>> I think for almost as long as I've been doing commodities, I won't date myself but I started commodities when I still had hair. Demand growth peeking because of substitution, other forms of energy, renewables etc.

EP I think is relatively optimistic on how quickly were going to move away from conventional energy. But they and their base case still see energy demand growing over the course of the next 10 years.

So, again, their parish relative to the exons in some of the other players that forecast longer-term. If you're going to continue to have you know, going demand or steady demand, you have to address the supply side.

If you look at the Companies, openings are not resetting the fact that energy prices of increased. You are not seeing the That you need to be able to facilitate that supply to meet the demand.

>> Let's talk about that than. The trend seems to be not toward investing in future production.

Investing in the future of oil.

It seems to be unless we reward shareholders, with shared buybacks and dividends, special dividends, they're not really investing in business. What's going on? Can that be sustainable long-term?

>> Monumental shipped on the Side towards renewables.

Going back to that BP report.

A wonderful chart in that it shows the amount of investment needed per year.. They break it down by region on the renewable front in order to be able to reach these, sort of, estimates that they have on kind of the global energy paths. In all of the geographies around the world, the amount of investing needed on the renewable front is higher than we've ever done before.

So you need, with the exception of China, China had a year that was elevated, but on average the amount of investment you need on the renewable side to meet those optimistic forecasts are well above where we are right now. Even still, I think we have to remember that the growth in renewable good is not meaningful enough to offset the magnitude of demand on the conventional front that we have today. We are going to consume 100 million barrels a day of oil. To put that into context, 10 years ago when we started talking about energy transition and substitution, we were soaked we were consuming 90 million barrels a day.

The global economy if they believe the GDP growth is something expected in the future, GP is energy.

Unfortunately, that energy today, unfortunately/fortunately depending on your perspective, then energy today is still very oil guest and cold focused.

>> That would've been a time to were people as investors, the TSX had to offer, energy was a pretty big focus.

Not that we still don't have some major names but what's the situation they're in terms of foreign investment dollars looking to Canada as an opportunity of inflows?

What's the state of our industry here domestically?

>> I think if you look at the last 10 years, a lot of capital went to the US production because it was shorter cycle, the regulatory environment in the US was arty more favourable than it was in Canada than it is in Canada.

I think that the productive resource in the US, is not as meaningful as that wise because we've gone through a lot of this with the best acreage that we have.

Canada is pretty interesting if we can figure out our pipeline constraints. Canada has a relatively clean resource. Reasonable rule of law, and again, if you look at the opportunities elsewhere, you know, US Michelle is not doing what it is done historically. The economics are not as favourable as what we thought they were 10 years ago.

I think Canada looks super interesting.

>> We take that altogether we think of the year we had were energy was the clear winner in a very tough year.

All that was in the first half of the year. How does this year play out? If you have an investor looking at the energy space with Canadian stocks or global stocks… What kind of performance to be expected?

Outsize or something decent?

>> I would see on the commodity front, I anticipate that we will see further upside in oil prices. Oil is trading $80 a barrel.

I think as the year progresses and we have some more certainty on how weak demand is seen to be Ian we can kinda get some conviction on what happens with Russian production, I think almost regardless of how you cut it I think the year ends tighter than how we started and I think that's a positive front.

On energy equities, Greg I think that represents 5% of the S&P and folks have to look at it. When folks look at it, something they haven't had to do for the last 10 years, once they start looking at the balance, I think they will come to very similar conclusions that people who are looking at the balance think "hey, we have a problem" we are still using a tremendous amount of wealth to generate our GDP but we forgot about the supply side, the investment side. Part of that is the fact that we've been in a bear market for 10 years, 15 years. There hasn't been an incentive to invest.

Today the economics are telling you that… Any concerns or any issue.

>> That was Hussein Allidina Head of Commodities a TD Asset Management.

Let's check in on the markets.

A lot going on this week. The US Fed rate decision, we have a slew of corporate earnings.

US jobs kicking the doors off this morning. Modestly positive with the TSX Composite Index up 79 points. We will call that a little more than 1/3 of a percent.

Pretty substantial pullback the price of gold.

Some of the gold names clued in Kinross, we saw Barrack off the top of the show. Kinross down a little more than 4% at this hour. We want to check out the oil names because the actual price of American benchmark crude is on a roller coaster ride today.

The Athabasca oil holding there.

Wanted to show you earlier, it was doing a little better on the upside.

Now a little shy of 1%. South of the border, as investors digest the jobs reports, some disappointments from some big tech names, US Federal Reserve rate decision earlier this week, some modest weakness. Down, we will call at four points. A little less than 1/10 of a percent of the S&P 500.

The tech heavy NASDAQ considering some of those disappointments, down modestly with 18 points right now.

We showed you investors seeing through the weakness in Apple's most recent quarter, at least not today for Amazon.

That name was also one of the earnings after hours yesterday.

A bit of a disappointment down to the tune of almost 4 1/2%.

>> Fresh data on home sales in Toronto and Vancouver. A pretty big tumble for the month of January.

Of course borrowing costs have been moving higher and our Anthony Okolie has been digging into it with a better look.

>> Thanks Greg. A quick round up of what happened with the numbers today.

It did slow in January, not surprising, for higher borrowing costs or keeping buyers on the sidelines.

Here in Toronto, Canada's largest city, home sales were down nearly 45% from January last year.

The average selling price from a home in January, just slightly above 1 million. That's slightly lower than December of last year.

Down compared to January 2022. Of course that was the start of the Bank of Canada's aggressive rate hikes.

Home resales also fallen in the Toronto suburbs.

As well as smaller cities in semi-rural areas.

Just an example, suburbs,… Last year's peak, price index down 22% from the peak. Again, when you look at homes up for resale, fewer sellers who put the homes up on the market in January. That suggests that mortgage holders are handling the jump in interest rates.

Meanwhile, in Vancouver, January home sales dropped 55% from last year.

It's also down 21% from December. Home prices also came down in January.

The cops at benchmark home price was more than just over a million, a 7% year-over-year drop. So overall, no big surprises in the January housing read. The data continues to show the same trends that we've been seeing all year.

Moderating prices.

That seems to be continuing in January as well.

>> Pretty clear this week, brought on by that aggressive rate hiking cycle.

We did get the Bank of Canada telling us just last week that they are on pause now.

The course could change but they want to step back and see what effect they have had. What is TD Economics now think of the Bank of Canada on pause?

When you see it bottom for this market?

>> I think when the dust settles, sometime early in 2023.

They are also forecasting Canadian average home prices will bottom as well in early 2023.

They expect Canadian home prices to drop about 20%.

Again, this is consistent with the Bank of Canada tightening cycle where they paused recently with additional rate hiking/week of 25 basis points.

Even effectivity doesn't bottom in the next few months, TD Economics says that sales level will stay depressed and they expect 2023 will mark the weakest sales year since 2001. Now, there are some key risks to the forecast. They think if more homeowners end up listing their homes due to higher monthly payments caused by rising interest rates, that could put pressure, price is even greater than the expected. So far, the number listing hitting the market has been pretty subdued.

>> Fascinating stuff and obviously a huge topic of interest in this country. Thanks Anthony.

> My pleasure.

> MoneyTalk Live's Anthony Okolie. Stay tuned on Monday, Greg Barnes will be our guest answer your questions about mining stocks. A reminder that you can send us your questions by emailing moneytalklive@td.com.

On behalf of me and Anthony at the desk and everyone behind the cameras, thanks for watching us on MoneyTalk Live and see you next week.

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