TSX Q3 2026: Gold and Shopify Carried the Quarter
Four Canadian gold names added 1.17 index points to the S&P/TSX Composite this quarter. Shopify, by itself, added 1.17. Between them those two blocks are worth more than the entire index gain, which stands at 1.73% in Canadian dollars. Declining names were 57.56% of the index by start weight.
Every figure in this piece is measured from the June 30 close to Tuesday, September 29, 2026, with Wednesday’s session still to come. None of it is a final quarterly number.
| Index points contributed | |
|---|---|
| Agnico Eagle, Wheaton Precious, Franco-Nevada and Barrick combined | +1.17 |
| Shopify, alone | +1.17 |
Underneath the index print, 105 names rose and 111 fell, with not one finishing the quarter unchanged. Three of the eleven sectors gained ground and eight lost it.
How the rebuild works
We priced 216 of the 217 equity lines in the fund that tracks the index. Weights come from the iShares S&P/TSX Capped Composite Index ETF holdings disclosure, each name’s return is its own June 30 to September 29 close, and each start-of-quarter weight is that holding’s exact share count valued at the June 30 close, so the contributions sum to the index move. Prices throughout are Yahoo Finance data.
The rebuild lands at +1.67% against the Composite’s printed +1.73%. It is close, not exact. The remaining 0.06 points is mostly survivorship: we apply September 28 membership across the whole quarter, so a name deleted from the index during Q3 contributes nothing to our figure while it contributed to the index’s, and a name added at the September rebalance carries its full June-to-September return in ours as though we had held it throughout. The single unpriced line and share counts that moved on issuance or buybacks account for the rest.
One note on basis. Every return here is a price return, which is what an index attribution requires, because the Composite is itself a price index. Dividends are excluded, and that runs one way: the high yielders that fell look modestly less bad on a total-return basis. TELUS is -22.87% on price against -21.74% on total return, Enbridge -13.91% against -12.73%, Scotiabank +6.51% against +7.50%. The fund itself returned +1.74% on price and +2.25% including distributions.
Three sectors up, eight down
Multiply each name’s start weight by its return, sum by sector, and the quarter separates cleanly into the part that worked and the part that did not.
| Sector | Start weight | Sector return (CAD) | Index pp | Members up |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Materials | 16.49% | +14.45% | +2.38 | 50 of 60 |
| Information Technology | 7.41% | +16.92% | +1.25 | 7 of 9 |
| Energy | 16.07% | +1.82% | +0.29 | 20 of 36 |
| Health Care | 0.35% | -5.18% | -0.02 | 2 of 5 |
| Real Estate | 1.32% | -8.40% | -0.11 | 0 of 17 |
| Consumer Discretionary | 3.13% | -5.00% | -0.16 | 0 of 8 |
| Communication | 1.65% | -11.65% | -0.19 | 0 of 5 |
| Consumer Staples | 3.29% | -7.00% | -0.23 | 2 of 10 |
| Utilities | 3.57% | -8.20% | -0.29 | 1 of 13 |
| Industrials | 10.64% | -3.03% | -0.32 | 12 of 30 |
| Financials | 36.08% | -2.58% | -0.93 | 11 of 23 |
Index percentage points contributed by each sector, Q3 2026. Weights from the iShares XIC holdings file as of September 28, 2026; returns from daily closes, June 30 to September 29.
Materials, information technology and energy added 3.92 index points between them. The remaining eight sectors took 2.25 back. The difference is the quarter. For scale on the other side of the border, the S&P 500 gained 2.29% and the Nasdaq Composite 2.23% over the same window, both measured in US dollars against the TSX’s Canadian dollars.
Two blocks of the index did the lifting
| Contributor | Sector | Jun 30 | Sep 29 | Return | Start wt | Index pp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify (SHOP) | Info Tech | $162.26 | $210.04 | +29.45% | 3.96% | +1.17 |
| Suncor (SU) | Energy | $76.30 | $95.82 | +25.58% | 1.80% | +0.46 |
| Canadian Natural (CNQ) | Energy | $56.12 | $66.91 | +19.23% | 2.34% | +0.45 |
| Agnico Eagle (AEM) | Materials | $220.36 | $263.94 | +19.78% | 2.25% | +0.45 |
| Wheaton Precious (WPM) | Materials | $159.54 | $191.82 | +20.23% | 1.46% | +0.30 |
| Cenovus (CVE) | Energy | $35.19 | $43.99 | +25.01% | 0.93% | +0.23 |
| Franco-Nevada (FNV) | Materials | $295.93 | $352.11 | +18.98% | 1.15% | +0.22 |
| Barrick (ABX) | Materials | $52.15 | $58.47 | +12.12% | 1.73% | +0.21 |
Prices are Toronto closes in Canadian dollars, and contributions are rounded to two decimals, so a column will not always sum exactly. Every name in this table was checked against its dividend-adjusted return, and none of these moves is a split or a special distribution wearing a price move’s clothes.
Shopify’s 1.17 index points is roughly two thirds of the quarter’s gain on its own. Roughly is the right precision, because the answer depends on whether you divide by the printed +1.73% or by our +1.67% rebuild. Behind it, the information technology sector was 7 of 9 members higher, but the rest of the sector is small change by comparison: Constellation Software added 0.10 points on a +8.48% return, Descartes 0.02 on +14.62%, CGI 0.02 on +4.54%, and BlackBerry took 0.07 back on a -31.10% quarter. Materials contributed more than any single name at +2.38 points, and it took 50 advancing stocks out of 60 to get there.
The other side of the ledger was spread across five sectors. These are also Toronto closes in Canadian dollars.
| Decliner | Sector | Jun 30 | Sep 29 | Return | Start wt | Index pp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Enbridge (ENB) | Energy | $76.91 | $66.21 | -13.91% | 3.45% | -0.48 |
| Brookfield (BN) | Financials | $60.51 | $51.70 | -14.56% | 2.61% | -0.38 |
| Royal Bank (RY) | Financials | $293.68 | $283.28 | -3.54% | 8.22% | -0.29 |
| TC Energy (TRP) | Energy | $93.92 | $82.70 | -11.95% | 1.95% | -0.23 |
| Cameco (CCO) | Energy | $144.56 | $123.29 | -14.71% | 1.27% | -0.19 |
| Couche-Tard (ATD) | Staples | $90.40 | $77.96 | -13.76% | 1.36% | -0.19 |
| RB Global (RBA) | Industrials | $165.11 | $115.45 | -30.08% | 0.62% | -0.19 |
| Intact (IFC) | Financials | $292.71 | $246.65 | -15.74% | 1.04% | -0.16 |
The metal and the miners went different distances
December COMEX gold, priced on the same contract at both ends, began the quarter at $4,098.50 an ounce in US dollars and ended Tuesday at $4,179.70, up 1.98%. Those endpoints describe the quarter poorly. On that same December contract the metal traded as low as $4,048.70 on July 16 and as high as $4,697.80 on August 24.
The equities went further than the endpoints did. The iShares S&P/TSX Global Gold Index ETF rose 17.75% in Canadian dollars over the quarter, and the four large precious-metals names in the table above rose between 12.12% and 20.23%, also in Canadian dollars. The Canadian dollar moved 0.23% against the US dollar over the three months.
The metal finished close to where it started and the producers did not. Which Canadian gold names actually convert a gold price into margin is the question that follows from that, and it is the basis on which we rank Canadian gold stocks on margin rather than ounces.
Our reading of the quarter starts in the bond market
Government of Canada benchmark yields rose by roughly the same amount at every tenor, to the Bank of Canada’s latest published day of September 28.
| Benchmark | Jun 30, 2026 | Sep 28, 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2-year Canada | 2.74% | 3.37% | +63 bp |
| 5-year Canada | 3.01% | 3.68% | +67 bp |
| 10-year Canada | 3.38% | 3.96% | +58 bp |
Those readings come from the Bank’s own Canadian bond yield series. A higher yield is a higher discount rate, and a higher discount rate reduces what a cash flow arriving years from now is worth today. That link between the bond market and a share price does most of the work in the rest of this piece, so if it is unfamiliar territory, our guide to how a discount rate moves a share price walks through it from the beginning.
The sectors that sit closest to that discount rate had a quarter to match, and their breadth is more telling than their returns.
Share of each sector’s TSX members that rose over the quarter, June 30 to September 29, 2026. Members and sector labels from the iShares XIC holdings file.
Real estate was 0 of 17. Not one member of the sector rose. Utilities managed 1 of 13, communication 0 of 5 with TELUS down 22.87% and BCE down 6.32%, and consumer discretionary 0 of 8 with Aritzia down 21.61%. When the discount rate moves 60 basis points in a single quarter, the question that survives a drawdown like real estate’s is which distributions are genuinely covered by cash flow, which is the basis on which we rank Canadian REITs on distribution safety.
Oil rose 30% in US dollars and the energy sector returned 1.8%
This is the sharpest version of the same pattern. The November NYMEX WTI contract, priced on that same contract at both ends, went from $68.68 on June 30 to $89.37 on Tuesday, a gain of 30.13% in US dollars. Tuesday’s figure is the settlement-window price, the volume-weighted price of trades between 2:28 and 2:30 p.m. ET. Canadian energy returned 1.82% in Canadian dollars.
The reason sits inside the sector. Suncor, Canadian Natural and Cenovus added 1.14 index points between them. Enbridge and TC Energy took 0.71 of that back, and the sector finished at +0.29. Both are long-duration businesses built on contracted cash flows, and our reading is that over this quarter they traded as duration traded rather than as the barrel did. Energy was also only 20 of 36 members higher, a thinner majority than a 30% move in crude might suggest.
None of this says the yield move caused any particular stock to fall. It says the two are consistent, across enough of the index that coincidence is a strain, and that the mechanism connecting them is the one described above.
The rate question is still open. One-month CORRA futures on the Montreal Exchange put the October 2026 contract 1.75 basis points above the September one as of September 29. Because the October 28 decision touches only four of that month’s 31 days, that difference scales up to 13.56 basis points of expected move against the current 2.25% overnight target, or a little better than even odds on a quarter-point hike. The multiplier cuts both ways, so small changes in settlement prices move the answer by several basis points. Read it as a shade better than a coin flip in what the market is pricing, not as a forecast.
Financials are 36% of the index and they fell
Financials started the quarter at 36.08% of the Composite, returned -2.58% in Canadian dollars, and were the single largest drag at -0.93 index points. Eleven of the 23 members rose. Among the Big Six banks, five fell: Royal Bank -3.54%, TD -2.09%, BMO -3.98%, CIBC -2.91% and National Bank -7.19%, with Scotiabank the exception at +6.51% and the only one of the six to add to the index, at +0.20 points. Brookfield was the sector’s largest individual drag at -14.56%, and Intact fell 15.74%.
The arithmetic is what matters for reading the quarter. The largest block in the index went backwards while the index went forwards, which is exactly the circumstance where a headline index return stops describing anything in particular.
What the weighted average hides
An index return is a weighted average, and this quarter the spread inside the average is wide. Two blocks of the market, four gold names and one software company, are worth more than the whole gain between them. Entire sectors went 0 for 17, 0 for 8 and 0 for 5. And 57.56% of the index by start weight belonged to names that finished the quarter lower.
A Canadian investor who held the Composite is up 1.73% in Canadian dollars with a session left to run. Almost nobody who held Canadian stocks had that quarter, and which side of it they landed on came down to whether they owned the hard-asset and growth end of the market or the end that trades like a bond.
Data as of September 29, 2026, except the Government of Canada bond yields, which are as of September 28, 2026.
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