could escort vessels<\/a> through the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\nBrent climbed 1.5 per cent to US$82.64 a barrel after closing yesterday at its highest since January, 2025.<\/p>\n
West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude advanced 0.8 per cent to US$75.16, after settling at its highest since June. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe primary near-term driver for oil prices remains \u200bthe US-Iran conflict,\u201d said OANDA senior market analyst Kelvin Wong.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt \u200cthis stage, only clear signs of de-escalation could mitigate or reverse the current bullish trend for WTI, and such signals are currently lacking.\u201d<\/p>\n
In other commodities, spot gold gained 1.8 per cent to US$5,175.39 an ounce. U.S. gold futures for April delivery added 1.2 per cent to trade at US$5,186.90.<\/p>\n
Currencies and bonds<\/p>\n
The Canadian dollar strengthened against its U.S. counterpart.<\/p>\n
The day range on the loonie was 72.98 US cents to 73.27 US cents in early trading. The Canadian dollar was up about 0.02 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, dropped 0.19 per cent to 98.86. <\/p>\n
The euro gained 0.22 per cent to US$1.1639. The British pound rose 0.17 per cent to US$1.3382. <\/p>\n
In bonds, the yield on the U.S. 10-year note was last up at 4.080 per cent.<\/p>\n
Economic news<\/p>\n
China\u2019s PMI<\/p>\n
Japan and Euro zone\u2019s services and composite PMI<\/p>\n
8:15 a.m. ET: U.S. ADP National Employment Report for February.<\/p>\n
8:30 a.m. ET: Canadian labour productivity for Q4. Estimate is a decline of 0.2 per cent from Q3.<\/p>\n
9:30 a.m. ET: Canada\u2019s S&P Global Services PMI for February.<\/p>\n
9:45 a.m. ET: U.S. S&P Global Services\/Composite PMI for February.<\/p>\n
10 a.m. ET: U.S. ISM Services PMI for February.<\/p>\n
10:20 a.m. ET: Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem speaks in Toronto.<\/p>\n
2 p.m. ET: U.S. Beige Book is released.<\/p>\n
With Reuters and The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Equities Global equities were mixed as \u200bmarkets took a breather \u200cafter a global equities rout on \u2060concerns \u200babout…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3244,49,48,3245,3237,3240,2640,3242,3246,166,3247,44,3241,3239,3243,3238],"class_list":["post-513615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-bonds","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-dollar","tag-dow-jones","tag-equities","tag-futures","tag-gold","tag-loonie","tag-nasdaq","tag-newnewsletter","tag-news","tag-oil","tag-sd","tag-silver","tag-tsx"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}