04:32 PM EDT, 07/22/2025 (MT Newswires) -- (Adds commentary from BMO Capital Markets in paragraphs 3 to 5 inclusive)

The Toronto Stock Exchange finished Tuesday's session higher and near record close levels as UBS joined a growing list of firms this week that see the Bank of Canada getting back on the rate cuts path this year, although Rosenberg Research suggests Canada's equity market doesn't "screen favourably' when it comes to the outlook.

The TSX closed up 47.43 points at 27,364,43, within 25 points of the July 17 record close of 27,386.93. Among sectors, battery metals led advancers, up 2.3%, while base metals rose 2.05%, while energy lagged, falling 0.05%.

Shortly after the close of trade Brian Belski, Chief Investment Strategist at BMO Capital Markets, published a note entitled 'Maintaining Discretionary Overweight'.

Bottom Line for Belski: "Despite sharp outperformance and expanding valuations over the last three months, we remain confident in our overweight stance on the Canadian Consumer Discretionary sector. From our perspective, the sector's recent dominance reflects the combination of bottoming underlying fundamentals and improving sentiment due to overly pessimistic consensus earnings estimates in the early part of the year. Indeed, since the end of 1Q 2025, the Consumer Discretionary sector has seen an improvement in the breadth of positive revisions and a clear bottoming in forward growth expectations -- trends we expect to continue into year-end.

"However," he added, "the sector has also seen rising fundamental dispersion over the last 12 months with NTM P/E dispersion reaching the highest level since 2019. This suggests to us that investors should become increasingly selective (stock picking versus broader sector positioning) while considering Consumer Discretionary positions in Canada. Within the large-cap space, given the more elevated valuations, we believe investors should focus on companies with strong and/or improving growth profiles. For small-cap Canadian Discretionary stocks, investors should sharpen their attention on GARP stocks that offer good relative value and improving growth outlooks."

Of commodities today, gold rose to a five-week high as it looks to challenge record levels on a weak dollar and falling treasury yields. Gold for August delivery was last seen up $37.40 to US$3,443.80 per ounce, the highest since the metal's record high of US$3,452.80 set on June 13.

But West Texas Intermediate crude oil closed lower for a third-straight session as supply is climbing while traders wait to see if U.S. President Donald Trump will follow through on his threat to impose tariffs on the country's trading partners next month. In its final day as the active contract, West Texas Intermediate crude oil for August delivery closed down $0.99 to settle at US$66.21 per barrel, while September Brent oil was last seen down $0.77 to US$68.44.

On interest rates, UBS in a July 21 note said it expects Canada's central bank to keep monetary policy on hold at its July 30 meeting, but added it sees some downside risk to its view of rates staying on hold through the rest of 2025. "The economy has performed better than feared although trade policy uncertainty has still weighed on activity and business and consumer expectations." The UBS note was published following the release Monday by the BoC of a Business Outlook Survey and a Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations for the second quarter.

Rosenberg Research, for its part, published a note breaking down the global equity landscape, evaluating various country fundamentals and valuations, both nominal and adjusted for real interest rates. According to it, international markets, namely Emerging Markets and parts of Europe, stand out for their more attractive risk/reward profiles. "Diversifying abroad remains the prudent strategy at this time for global equity investors," it added.

The research focused on valuations, especially benchmarked against current interest rates, and fundamentals in order to assess which countries and regions "screen favorably" when it comes to the outlook. It cited a few notable findings in the results. Emerging Markets being the clear favorites -- specifically, Poland and Asia-Pacific ex. Japan, which make up the top four countries in its list.

Of the 21 countries on the list, Canada was ranked 18.

"Safe to say that diversifying abroad remains a prudent strategy -- something we have been advocating for some time. Despite U.S. assets receiving the bulk of investors' attention, large pockets of international stocks serve up attractive fundamentals yet have been broadly ignored. Emerging Asia and Poland top our stock screen presented above (Canada, Japan, Italy, and the Netherlands bring up the rear). As such, investors who are sitting on years of outsized gains in the former would be best to crystalize some of those profits and increase ex. U.S. weights in the portfolio," Rosenberg Research concluded.