12:19 PM EST, 12/09/2024 (MT Newswires) -- The Toronto Stock Exchange is now up near 50 points at midday with miners (+4.2%) and energy (+1.5%) leading gains.

Technology and utilities are the biggest decliners, each down 0.9%, respectively.

Oil prices rose early on Monday as China said it plans to loosen monetary policy as its economy struggles while the rapid collapse of Syria's government added fresh geopolitical risk.

Gold moved higher too, as the dollar weakened ahead of next week's expected cut to U.S. interest rates, while the sudden collapse of the Assad regime in Syria added geopolitical risk.

BMO Economics in its morning note said the TSX marched higher last week, "punctuated by quite a bit of excitement on Friday". November's Labour Force Survey was "a bit of a mixed bag," but BMO still cited as headlines: jobs jumped 50.5k, about twice the size of the consensus call; growth in average hourly wages took a big step down from 4.9% y/y to 4.1%; and, the unemployment rate rose three tenths to 6.8%. BMO said the latter figure grabbed the most headlines among the surprises, and for good reason -- the jobless rate isn't just the highest of the cycle, it's the highest since 2017 (ex-pandemic, of course).

That's why, BMO said, market expectations shifted from split odds on a 25-or-50 bp move from the BoC on Wednesday to a "more forceful" shift towards a second consecutive 50 bp move. And, for the same reason, BMO changed its call for the BoC to cut by 50 bps. But, as BMO's Benjamin Reitzes explained last week, it said there are plenty of risks to these larger moves. Among the biggest ones are the increasing divergence with the Fed (and further depreciation in the loonie) as well as the possibility of reigniting the housing market.

For its part, National Bank thinks November's labour market data will act as the tiebreaker and to it, the sharp rise in the jobless rate is a "clear sign that the time for restrictive monetary policy is long behind us." National Bank therefore expects the BoC to cut 50 bps for the second straight meeting. It said with uncertainty elevated and growing, there's no reason to expect a departure from a highly data-dependent stance. However, it added. with the policy rate set to hit the upper end of the BoC's estimated range (2.25% to 3.25%), Governing Council may want to return to more normal (i.e., 25 bp) rate adjustments in 2025.

Meanwhile, David Rosenberg noted former BoC Governor Stephen Poloz pulled no punches last week when he declared, "I would say we're in a recession, I wouldn't even call it a technical one." Rosenberg cited a chart on Canada's employment rate and said it shows "he is spot on". Rosenberg noted the unemployment rate (at a three-year high of 6.8%) is now up +1.7 percentage points over the past two years. "Every time this has happened in the past, the Canadian economy was either heading into recession, already in one, or crawling out of one," he said.

According to Rosenberg, the U.S. "may not be in a recession (yet), but the economy is in a growth turndown, nonetheless". Do not believe that this is still a +3% growth economy any longer, he said, before adding: "The momentum has subsided dramatically, and yet nobody talks about it." National has monthly real GDP data for October now, and noted the year over year trend is +2.8%, the six-month pace is down to a +2.3% annual rate, and on a three-month basis, pared to just +0.7% or a "virtual stall-speed".