The bidding war for Canada’s Inter Pipeline continues to heat up. Brookfield Infrastructure Partners has raised its hostile takeover bid price to $19.75 per share from its previous bid of $16.50, which puts it higher than the $19.45 friendly takeover bid that came in from Pembina Pipeline yesterday.
After major US indices gave back yesterday’s early gains to finish flat, US index futures are flat this morning. Overseas trading has been mixed with the Nikkei gaining 0.4%, the FTSE up 0.2%, the Dax flat and the Hang Seng down 0.6%. Australia’s resource-sensitive S&P/ASX is up 1.0%, while Canada’s resource-sensitive S&P/TSX finished at an all-time high yesterday just below the 20,000 level.
It’s a quiet in-between day for economic news. Yesterday’s North American data was mixed as US ISM manufacturing PMI (61.2 vs street 60.7) and ISM new orders (67.0 vs street 66.3) beat expectations but Canadian Manufacturing PMI (57.0 vs street 57.9) and US construction spending (0.2% vs street 0.6%) were disappointing.
Due to the US holiday on Monday, some of the economic numbers which would usually come out today have been pushed off to tomorrow. Thursday and Friday look to be busy days for economic reports which include US ADP payrolls (street 650K vs previous 742K) at 8:15 am tomorrow. Thursday also brings Service PMI reports from around the world plus the weekly US energy inventories and US initial jobless claims numbers. Friday caps off the week with the US nonfarm payrolls and Canadian employment reports.
In commodity action today, crude oil prices continue to climb with WTI up 0.8% after OPEC+ came out of yesterday’s meeting indicating that they intend to stick with their current plan of increasing production through July without adding more at this point. Copper, on the other hand, is down 0.7% today.
SIA Wealth In The Media
Chief Market Strategist Colin Cieszynski appeared on BNN Bloomberg yesterday and spoke about TSX 20,000 and changes in relative strength between asset classes and equity market sectors.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/video/tsx-will-hit-20-000-and-beyond-strategist~2213261