Agnico Eagle Stock Up 5.7%: Why AEM Jumped as Yields Fell
Agnico Eagle Mines (TSX: AEM) closed Thursday at $266.18 CAD, up 5.66%, the second largest single-stock contribution to the S&P/TSX Composite’s 1.55% gain. The company published nothing today; its September 28 notice sets third quarter results for October 28. Kinross did better, up 6.89% to $33.82 CAD, the clearest sign this was gold repricing, not a company story.
Gold rose as yields fell
Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. ET the US Bureau of Labor Statistics said the all items index “increased 0.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in September”, core up 0.3 percent. The Composite fell 1.11% that day, to 35,584.46 from 35,984.00. CPI was the trigger; our attribution of that decline put 70% of it on gold and copper falling together.
On Wednesday evening Reuters reported an interview with San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly. By Reuters’ account she saw more rate increases as more likely than not, but no need to act at the Fed’s October 27-28 meeting. “Why force urgency when you don’t need to have urgency?” she told Reuters.
On the US Treasury’s official curve, the 5-, 10- and 30-year all fell 9 basis points, a basis point being one hundredth of a percentage point: the 10-year from 5.19% to 5.10%. The 2-year fell 5 bp to 4.77%, so the policy-sensitive front end moved least, which sits awkwardly with an October-meeting story. Gold pays no interest, so a lower safe yield lifts its appeal, and a weaker US dollar makes it cheaper elsewhere; the Canadian dollar rose 0.26% to 0.7050.
Canadian yields publish a business day behind; Thursday’s arrives Friday. On October 14, the latest close both governments published, Canada’s 10-year at 3.85% against the US 10-year’s 5.19% left the gap at 134 bp, the same as the Tuesday reading our morning piece on the Canada-US yield gap used. The US leg fell another 9 bp on Thursday. Gold’s December contract ended at $4,194.00 USD, up 2.1%, snapping three declining sessions without clearing its October 9 close.
Gold miners carried the index
The Composite closed at 36,137.10, up 1.55%, its largest one-day gain since August 4, when it rose 1.63%. Our holding-by-holding attribution, covering 99.8% of index weight, reproduces +154.9 bp. Materials contributed +57.2 bp against financials’ +50.2 bp on roughly double the weight.
Materials was gold. Of its 60 constituents, the 42 precious-metals names, 12.94% of the index, delivered 56.3 of the sector’s 57.2 bp: more than a third of the index’s 154.9 bp move from 13% of its weight. The other eighteen added 0.9 bp, the copper names close to flat. Wednesday’s fall took gold and copper together; Thursday’s recovery took only gold.
Agnico Eagle led them at +14.3 bp, behind only Shopify’s +16.8. Our ranking of Canadian gold stocks weighs them against each other.
Celestica was the exception in technology, down 2.98% to $446.70 CAD and a 3.6 bp drag.
All eleven Canadian sectors beat their American counterparts
Our run prices both indexes inside the same 36 seconds, so this is no timing artifact: it measures the gap at 122.7 bp, with all eleven sectors returning more in Toronto than in New York. Materials is the largest piece at 54.5 bp, technology next at 44.0: American technology subtracted 21.0 bp from the S&P 500 while Canada’s added 23.0, from 38.69% of one index against 9.35% of the other. Health care ran the other way: 9.46% of the S&P 500, up 1.84% there, against 0.30% here, costing Toronto 16.7 bp. What Toronto owns was the smaller part. The S&P 500 closed at 7,744.06, up 0.33%, the NASDAQ at 26,713.03, up 0.08%.
Energy fell on a 3% oil day
Energy was the only negative sector at -0.74%, -12.6 bp: eighteen fallers took 16.7 bp off, sixteen risers 4.1 bp back. The four largest drags were TC Energy (-5.1 bp), Enbridge (-4.5), Cenovus (-2.7, down 2.28%) and Suncor (-1.2), two midstream and two producers, while Canadian Natural and Imperial Oil barely moved at -0.3 and -0.2 bp. Uranium was most of the offset, Cameco 1.8 bp. The NYMEX WTI November contract’s settlement-window price, from Yahoo Finance trade data, rose 3.0% to $97.94 USD from $95.09. It was not an oil story, because oil rose.
What October 28 carries
Statistics Canada releases September CPI on Monday October 19, the last reading before the Bank of Canada’s October 28 decision, the rate 2.25% since October 30, 2025. That day also carries day two of the Fed meeting Daly saw no urgency about, and Agnico Eagle’s third quarter results.
Index levels, gold and CAD/USD: Yahoo Finance data as of October 15, 2026.
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