The TSX fell roughly 80 points to trade near 35,260 at midday Monday, dragged by a 3.5% decline in the mining sector, its worst-performing group of the session. The S&P 500 gained 0.63%, the Nasdaq climbed 1.02%, and the Dow added 0.23% on the same day. Same headlines, same oil spike, opposite reactions on either side of the border.
Brent crude touched $90 a barrel intraday, its highest level of the conflict, while WTI hit $84.59 before both pared back on a diplomatic signal from Iran's Foreign Ministry. That oil move is the connective tissue between the two markets, and it is producing completely different outcomes depending on what sits in each index.
Why the Same Oil Spike Cuts Two Ways
The Nasdaq's gain is a semiconductor story. Chip stocks are rebounding ahead of a heavy week of technology earnings, a sharp reversal from Friday, when the S&P 500 dropped 1.01% and the Nasdaq fell 1.4% on a semiconductor selloff compounded by a disappointing forecast from Netflix. Both of those declines fully reversed by Monday's close, with Monday's rally doing the work of erasing Friday's losses in a single session.
The TSX has no equivalent semiconductor weighting to catch that rebound, and its mining sector is doing the opposite of what energy is doing on the same oil-driven headlines. Gold has stayed pinned near $4,000 through the weekend's escalation, and gold miners are leading Monday's TSX decline as a result: the same pattern that pulled the index lower on Friday, when Agnico Eagle, Barrick and Wheaton Precious Metals all fell alongside broad bank weakness even as Canadian Natural rose 2.0% and Suncor added 2.6%.
The TSX and the S&P 500 tracked within a tight band of each other through the past three weeks and split apart specifically on Monday's session, the sharpest divergence point in the period.
TSX and S&P 500 daily closes, indexed to 100 at the July 3, 2026 close. The two benchmarks moved within half a point of each other for most of the period before splitting on Friday and Monday's sessions.
What to Watch Into the Close
Friday's reversal shows how fast this can flip again. A single session took the S&P 500 from a 1.01% loss to setting up Monday's 0.63% gain, and the mechanism was entirely a technology and semiconductor story unrelated to the Iran conflict. The TSX has no comparable lever working in its favour today: its energy sector is participating in the oil move, but its materials and precious metals weighting is large enough to offset those gains on a day when gold itself is not moving.
The Canadian dollar traded firmer Monday even as the TSX lagged, a reminder that a weak index session and a weak currency session are not the same trade this week. Financials, which fell alongside miners on Friday, are the sector to watch for whether Monday's divergence extends or the TSX claws back some of today's losses into the close.