Payroll employment slipped 0.2% in March, the second straight monthly drop…

… driven by continued softness in food services, construction, and transportation.

Job openings ticked up slightly to 500K, but not enough to push the vacancy rate of 2.8% higher - which has held steady for the last four months…

… resulting in the number of job seekers per available seat stabilizing around three, pointing to oversupply in the labour market.

The big-6 Canadian banks beat across the board in Q2, though in a less convincing fashion than last quarter…

… despite continued strength in wealth management and capital markets - with AUM, trading activity, and advisory work all up big Y/Y. The durability of those earnings tailwinds was a focus for analysts…

… which represents downside risk for the group, given NIM expansion is mostly realized and credit risk remains sticky.

Alongside some company-specific factors for CIBC (H2 guide, Caribbean sale) and National (expense growth), those dynamics drove weak trading…

… as investors assess whether the backdrop is supportive of peak post-GFC multiples.

Q1’s current account deficit came in worse than expected, falling to $7B on a lower investment surplus and wider trade deficit…

… which could reverse in Q2 on the Iran conflict. The financial account surplus remained strong at $17B, driven by record demand for Canadian bonds…

… which more-than-offset $40B of US tech buying by Canadian investors. Canadian companies also stepped up their investment abroad, with $23B of reinvested earnings and $9B of M&A outpacing $22B of foreign direct investment in the quarter.

Tamarack Valley Energy (TVE) ran 7% on the back of its $804M Charlie Lake divestiture, which pushes the company into a $125M+ net cash position…

… supporting a 25% dividend increase, continued buybacks…

… and the flexibility to ramp up CapEx in the Clearwater, with management sharing an appetite to pull forward wells if oil stays elevated - given the team expects 2+ barrels of secondary recovery (via waterflood) for every primary barrel.

More interesting than that is what comes next, with $1.3B of available liquidity and a number of public neighbours like Headwater (HWX) and Rubellite (RBY)…

… that could become acquisition targets, especially if TVE shares re-rate - freeing up the equity as a potential financing source.

ATS Corp. (ATS) gave back 14% on its Q4 results, which missed on EPS and came with guidance for negative Y/Y growth in Q1 at the midpoint…

… driven by normalization in the life sciences segment after a strong year and an exit from some low margin transportation work. While management still expects modest Y/Y growth in fiscal 2027…

… investors will likely wait for proof, with the current multiple sitting above the long-term average.

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