• Trump hits the brakes for 90 days, doubles down on China stance

• Building permits beat on strength in commercial and industrial

• Mixed signals on Canada/U.S. travel demand weighs on Air Canada stock

• The best Canadian election tracker on the internet

• Team Trump makes millions on his signal

Unless you bravely didn’t check markets recently, you’d know Trump issued a 90-day pause on “Liberation Day” tariffs in excess of 10% (no impact to Canada), but doubled down on his aggressive stance towards China by lifting the tariff on imports to 145%.

It’s been all rumours since, with speculation the two could shut each other out of their respective stock exchanges one one end, and that they’re willing to come to the table under the right conditions on the other.

It’s been one of the most volatile periods in markets, with violent moves in either direction and high volumes - two forces that should benefit the trading arms of the banks, as we highlighted in our quarterly recap of bank earnings.

With some of the U.S. banks reporting today, we should get a sense of the staying power of this outperformance.

Building permits beat expectations

Building permits for February came in at $13.1B, up nearly 3% M/M which was well ahead of expectations for a 0.5% decline.

Under the hood results were mixed, with very strong 15% growth in non-residential permitting partly offset by a 3% decline in residential activity.

In residential, multi-family activity was down 4% and continues to weigh on results, while single family permitting remained relatively flat, down less than 1%.

Commercial and industrial permitting were the big drivers in the non-residential category, up 23% and 12%, respectively. As Canada focuses inward to reduce U.S. reliance, we could continue to see strong activity out of these segments.

U.S. demand drives turbulence at Air Canada

Unfortunately for Air Canada (AC) a perfect storm has been brewing, with the “Buy Canada” movement, a weak loonie, and tempered economic forecasts all contributing to a 40% YTD decline.

An alarming report came out last month saying booking demand is down as much as 70% through September, but management sees something much more modest.

We got commentary more recently from Delta, who seems to be seeing a more aggressive demand drop off.

At 20% of AC’s total passenger revenue, it should be interesting to see how this plays out over the coming quarters.

The best election tracker we’ve seen

If you’re like us and are more focused on markets than politics, you likely can’t keep up with all the promises our candidates have made. A chart can tell you part of the story…

… but it can’t give you what you need to make a decision come April 28^th . Lucky for us, Build Canada just launched a real-time platform tracker, with details on each of the >300 promises made so far by our candidates - it’s awesome.

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This isn’t the first time Trump has called his shot, highlighting a buying opportunity during his first presidential term as the market fell on trade tensions… surprise surprise.

Ethics and legality aside, the market ripped higher after his December 2018 buy recommendation.. let’s see what happens this time.

• Liberal promises just keep happening to intersect with Carney's business interests

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• Canada reveals list of auto tariffs

Pet Valu (PET) was strong today, with no obvious catalyst outside of an upgrade and target increase from Stifel, citing low tariff risk and a historically cheap valuation.

ADF Group (DRX) reported earnings today, missing estimates by a small margin. It sold off hard though, on a guide for negative Y/Y revenue growth and margin compression due to the steel tariffs.

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