12:15 PM EDT, 06/11/2025 (MT Newswires) -- The Toronto Stock Exchange is up 60 points at midday with technology (+1.6%) and healthcare (+1%) leading gains. Energy, up 0.6%, is the third biggest gainer.

Miners, down 1.4% is the biggest decliner.

BMO Economics in its morning note said equity markets were pointing to a steady open this morning despite the U.S. and China reportedly agreeing to de-escalate the trade war, at least removing export controls (e.g., China's rare-earth minerals) that had been on since their meeting in early-June. BMO said it appears markets are already beyond this and looking forward to further easing of trade tensions, with the S&P 500 within 2% of a record high, and the TSX already bouncing around those levels.

Rosenberg Research published a note entitled 'Trump Likely to Concede to Chinese Pressure on Export Controls' in which it said the U.S. President's willingness to deal on national security related export controls is "a bullish pressure", but could have major geopolitical implications over the next decade. In an 'Executive Summary' the research said: "The biggest news of the week is the outline of a possible Trump-Xi deal, trading rolled-back export controls for rare earth goods. This would be a short-term boost to oil and equities, but would be a major strategic win for China's hardball negotiating strategy. Oil has jumped up the last few weeks on both trade optimism and geopolitical risk concerns. Meanwhile, Republican Senators remain deeply divided."

In terms of market focus today, CIBC on U.S. CPI for May noted that despite elevated tariffs, there were no major signs of sticker prices rising with inflation coming in soft in May. Core CPI rose by 0.13% in the month, below expectations of a 0.3% gain, and the three-month annualized core CPI fell four ticks to 1.7%. Headline inflation also increased by 0.1%, also a tick below forecasters' predictions. In year-over-year terms, headline and core came in at 2.4% and 2.8% respectively.

CIBC said: "Today's data could indicate that US businesses and their counterparts could have been trying to manage the early stages of the trade war by eating the tariffs in the hope that cooler heads would prevail. But with the US-China framework agreement and the federal appeals decision mean that the current tariff will last at least through most of the summer. If that ends up being the permanent state of affairs for US trade policy, softer inflation reports like today won't be norm and in that scenario, we would expect core prices to rise by 1% over time and the level of GDP to be permanently dented by 0.5% from tariffs and uncertainty. Those forces will keep the Fed on the sidelines until December."

In stocks, Dollarama ( DLMAF ), which earlier Wednesday reported a strong first-quarter beat, has jumped 10% higher, to a fresh high of $193.08, and is the second most actively traded stock on the exchange. Dollarama ( DLMAF ) touched an intra-day high of $196.46, a record high.