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Davos, Netflix and Intel results all loom large this week. Read all about it my weekly Globe and Mail preview.
Here are five things to know today:
Closed for business: US markets are closed today for Martin Luther King Jr Day but plunging futures indicate if they were open it would be a terrible day. Futures along with global markets are deep in the red as the US takes it’s most aggressive step yet in the pursuit of Greenland. Gold is surging 1.6% on safe haven flows. US President Donald Trump threatened to implement a 10% tariff on 8 European companies that “have journeyed to Greenland, for purposes unknown” and he says it would go up to 25% by June. If it comes down to a military match up, the US is clearly going to win. But this could actually be won by Europe in the financial markets. One, the threat of tariffs has reignited market anxieties and is a reminder that much of the rally is built on the fact that most of those threats never materialized. Still, US markets underperformed global markets on the so-called “Sell America” trade. Two, the US has a lot of debt and its largest lender is…Europe. If the bloc starts dumping their holdings that will spike borrowing costs and no matter how strong your military is, countries never win a fight against the bond market. “There will be hundreds of different opinions on how this will all pan out but remember that the tariffs announced on Liberation Day were ultimately softened a week later, on the day that long-end US Treasury yields saw a scary Asian session as international investors started to vote with their feet in terms of US funding,” wrote Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid, “So financial markets may play a big part in how this situation resolves itself.” It is perhaps no coincidence these threats were made when the bond market was closed. A lot can happen in 24 hours. Canada is considering sending Canadian soldiers to Greenland as part of military exercises with NATO allies. This could risk rebuke from the US but Prime Minister Mark Carney seems to be given a long leash by the President. Tomorrow, the US Supreme Court could rule on whether Trump’s tariffs are legal just in case you thought this week was going to be calm. BMO’s Jennifer Lee does a great job summarizing 2026 so far (below). Don’t forget, Davos is also this week featuring a speech from Trump on Wednesday. This year’s theme is “A Spirit of Dialogue.” Let’s see if that prevails or is simply wishful thinking on the part of organizers. One thing is clear, these countries likely feel like they need to spend more money on defense so watch those stocks.
CPI: Talking about Canadian inflation seems pretty pedestrian compared to the prospect of the US taking action against a NATO ally’s territory but let’s be grateful for its simplicity. Headline inflation unexpectedly picked up in Canada to 2.4% vs the expected gain of 2.2% while core prices cooled down. The pickup in headline inflation is largely because they are lapping the prior year when the government temporarily removed taxes on certain goods and services. Either way, the Bank of Canada is unlikely to be forced to change rates because of the print. Later this morning we will get the bank of Canada business outlook survey.
Unplanned hit: Watch shares of Keyera at the open after it warned that an unplanned outage at its Alberta Envirofuels facility will continue to May and result in lower margins. The natural gas midstreamer is warning that its marketing business (the unit that buys and sells natural gas) will take a more than $100 million hit to profit. Analysts pegged 2026 profit for that unit at around $500 million, so a 25% reduction here.
Ch-ch-changes: Barrick announced that its CFO Graham Shuttleworth would be leaving after seven years in the role, replaced by Helen Cai who has been on the board since November 2021. This comes as Barrick is in the grips of activist investor Elliot Management and has been making moves to right size the business. Shuttleworth must have felt his days were numbered after the abrupt departure of Mark Bristow at the end of September. Shuttleworth was his CFO at Randgold. Cai is an analyst and investment banker by training which is pretty handy when you are exploring a spin-off and IPO of your North American gold assets.
Notable Calls: goeasy is being downgraded at TD Cowen to hold. The stock has been anything but easy to own (I’m a shareholder) and TD argues it is not going to get better. “We believe consensus is too high,” wrote TD’s Graham Ryding, “goeasy’s valuation has historically been highly correlated with earnings growth expectations. Earnings growth has been soft in 2025, and we believe it could remain challenged in 2026.”
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