Oil Lifted the TSX 0.3%, an OpenAI Report Hit the Nasdaq
The S&P/TSX Composite closed Thursday up 0.30% at 35,145.38, the S&P 500 fell 0.47% to 7,765.36 and the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.25% to 27,193.34. Crude settled 3.6% higher and a Financial Times report on OpenAI’s revenue hit AI hardware into the close, but 87.3% of the 0.76 percentage point gap between Toronto and the S&P 500 traces to what the two indexes are made of rather than to how their companies traded.
The two American indexes parted company late. At 2:30 p.m. ET the S&P 500 was down 0.52% and the Nasdaq 1.19%, so the broad index recovered into the bell while the Nasdaq fell further.
Two drivers pulling in opposite directions
WTI for November settled at $91.45, up $3.21 or 3.64%, on the NYMEX settlement-window price from Yahoo Finance trade data. Thursday’s own news was the storm and the shipping lane. The National Hurricane Center advisory on Isaias issued at 1:00 p.m. CDT put the storm at 85 mph maximum sustained winds and expected to strengthen, under a hurricane warning running from Mississippi into Florida, and UK Maritime Trade Operations, which counts nine attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz this month, reported another vessel struck by projectiles off Qatar’s north coast, in Al Jazeera’s report of the UKMTO warning. Behind both, the Marine Minerals Administration release on Gulf shut-ins had 25.08% of US Gulf oil production offline as of 11:00 a.m. CDT Wednesday, against 9.24% a day earlier. Crude’s high was a $93.13 one-minute close at 11:03 a.m. ET, and it gave ground through the early afternoon, a retreat Reuters tied to President Trump’s post on Truth Social that “We will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the midterm elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd.” CNN’s account of the Iran post carries the same wording.
The Financial Times then reported that OpenAI’s annualised revenue is nearing $50 billion, against the roughly $70 billion that had circulated from investor accounts. OpenAI published nothing and nothing came in below anything: an outside estimate was revised down. Per CNN’s account of the FT reporting, a source said the $70 billion “did not come from OpenAI and likely came from a desire by firms to compare OpenAI’s numbers with Anthropic’s,” which uses gross revenue from cloud providers where OpenAI’s metric is net. OpenAI declined to comment. Nvidia closed down 2.94% and AMD down 3.90%, with Intel and Oracle each off about 6%, per CNN.
Composition did the work, for a second day running
A basis point here is one hundredth of a percentage point of the index’s return, not an index level point: the composite gained 103.48 level points, and its constituents contributed 29.6 basis points of return. Energy alone contributed 30.9, more than the whole day. Materials, 18.05% of the composite against 1.60% of the S&P 500, added 12.4 on a 0.69% return as gold rose 0.47% to $4,160.20. Remove energy’s contribution and Toronto sits at minus 1.3 basis points, fractionally red. Remove technology’s instead and it sits at plus 40.5.
What each index is made of, and what each sector did to the TSX on Thursday. Bars in the right panel are labelled in percentage points of the index return, so the +0.31 on energy is the 30.9 basis points quoted in the text. Sector weights: iShares XIC and XUS holdings files as of October 7, 2026, XUS on the IVV look-through renormalised to 100. Contribution is each holding’s fund weight times its own price return, summed by sector, closing prices October 8, 2026, Yahoo Finance quotes.
Hold Thursday’s Canadian sector returns exactly as they landed and apply the S&P 500’s weights instead, and the same returns produce minus 36.9 basis points. That swing of 66.5 is 87.3% of the 76.2 basis point gap, leaving 9.7 for sectors behaving differently in the two countries. Technology supplies 36.2 of it: Toronto’s tech fell 1.17% and cost 10.9 basis points at a 9.30% weight, where the identical decline at the S&P 500’s 40.26% weight would have cost 47.1. Health care supplies 11.0 more, at 0.32% of the composite against 9.11% of the S&P 500. Health care fell 1.25%, so the gain comes from not owning a sector that dropped. Those two are 47.2 of the 66.5, so more than two thirds of the composition effect comes from weights Toronto carries far less of.
Each sector’s contribution to the TSX minus what the identical return would have contributed at S&P 500 weights, in basis points, totalling +66.5. Sector weights: iShares XIC and XUS holdings files as of October 7, 2026, XUS on the IVV look-through renormalised to 100. Closing prices October 8, 2026, Yahoo Finance quotes on the two funds’ own holdings.
The same test on Wednesday’s 1.7% fall put composition at 85.1% of a 1.48 percentage point gap that ran the other way, Toronto down 1.70% against the S&P 500’s 0.22%. Two consecutive closes, gaps of opposite sign, the same recipe explaining both. Thursday went further than amplifying a shared move: the same Canadian returns, arranged American, give a red index. Participation flipped with it, 132 of 216 members higher against 42 on Wednesday.
The names, including one that outperformed and still cost the index
Suncor Energy rose 3.73% for 8.5 basis points and Canadian Natural Resources 3.01% for 8.4, with Agnico Eagle adding 4.3, Barrick Mining 3.4, Enbridge 3.2 and Cenovus 2.9.
Celestica was the worst single contributor, down 4.42% for 5.9 basis points, and it is Toronto’s direct exposure to the OpenAI story. The index closed green anyway because AI hardware is 1.34% of it. Shopify repays care: it fell 1.01%, less than the Nasdaq it gets compared to, and still took 5.8 basis points off the TSX, because it is 5.72% of the index. An outperformer subtracts too.
Financials and technology finished a basis point apart, at minus 10.1 and minus 10.9, by opposite routes. Financials fell 0.30% on a weight of 33.71%, so a third of the index barely moved and cost as much as the sector that fell nearly four times harder.
Two sessions decided this way make the plainer point. Owning the Canadian market as one broad fund is a sector allocation decision, a third of it in financials and a third more in energy and materials, whether or not anyone made it deliberately. For readers weighing that, our ranking of Canadian ETFs is the next stop.
What comes next
Statistics Canada releases the Labour Force Survey for September on Friday October 9 at 8:30 a.m. ET. The Bank of Canada’s next rate decision is October 28, with the policy rate at 2.25% since October 30, 2025.
Disclosure
Disclaimer: The content on bestcanadianstocks.ca is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions. Index levels, sector weights and every constituent return are closing figures for Thursday October 8, 2026. Sector weights are the iShares XIC and XUS holdings files as of October 7, 2026, and prices are Yahoo Finance quotes. Holding Canadian sector returns at American sector weights is our own calculation on those files. WTI is the November NYMEX contract priced over the 2:28 to 2:30 p.m. ET settlement window, which is NYMEX’s own settlement method. Gulf shut-in figures are the Marine Minerals Administration release of October 7, and the storm classification is the National Hurricane Center advisory of 1:00 p.m. CDT on October 8.
