Everything You Need to Know on Friday: Teamsters Take Down Picket Lines at CN, Stoppage Continues at CPKC

Good morning mooers! Here are things you need to know about today's market:

● S&P/TSX 60 Index Standard Futures are trading at 1,393.00, up 0.80% from previous close

● Jackson Hole history points to Powell sidestepping market shocks

● Teamsters take down picket lines at CN, stoppage continues at CPKC

● Gold Fields cuts target again on Chile, South Africa challenges

Today, the Canadian dollar is trading at 73.63 cents US, a slight increase as previous close.

S&P/TSX 60 Index Standard Futures are trading at 1,393.00, up 0.80% from previous close.

If Treasury and U.S. stock markets are betting on one thing from Jerome Powell at the Jackson Hole symposium Friday, it’s this: He’ll play it safe.

It’s a critical moment for the U.S. Federal Reserve chair as he tries to navigate through a month that saw a gauge of equity volatility briefly spike to a generational high and bond traders going all in on bets that the U.S. central bank is on the cusp of slashing interest rates.

By some measures, the annual gathering of policymakers and academics in Wyoming is expected to be an uneventful one. Strategists from JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Deutsche Bank AG expect moderate moves for bonds during the conference while options traders are betting on small swings for stocks in the days ahead. Recent history is on their side.

“The Fed is perfectly fine where we are at now,” said Blake Gwinn, head of U.S. interest rate strategy at RBC Capital Markets. “I don’t think he will feel the need to really make waves here.”

With a few exceptions, the gathering hasn’t been a major market-moving event. Over the past decade, yields on both two- and 10-year notes moved less than four basis points on average, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The S&P 500 Index has been more reactionary, fluctuating around 1.3 per cent on average.

The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference says it has taken down picket lines at Canadian National Railway Co. and its workers will begin returning to work on Friday.

However, the union said the work stoppage at Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. remains ongoing pending an order from the Canada Industrial Relations Board.

Following months of increasingly fraught contract talks, Canada’s two biggest railways both locked out workers after failing to reach deals with the union by a Thursday deadline.

The unprecedented work stoppage prompted federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to refer the dispute to the Canada Industrial Relations Board to impose binding arbitration.

The union and CPKC officials met with the board on Thursday and will meet again Friday.

The Johannesburg-listed gold miner now expects to produce 2.05 million to 2.15 million ounces of the precious metal this year, according to a statement released on Friday. The company had already cut its annual target in June by as much as 10 per cent to 2.2 million to 2.3 million ounces.

The “operational performance was disappointing” during the first six months of the year, with production declining by a fifth to 918,000 ounces compared with the same period in 2023, Gold Fields said. First-half profit fell 15 per cent to US$389 million, at a time when the bullion price has hit successive records.

Gold Fields’ stock fell as much as 7.7 per cent following the release of the firm’s half-year results.

A severe winter is slowing down the ramp-up of output at the company’s new Salares Norte project in Chile, while challenges at its South Deep mine in South Africa also curbed production.

Gold Fields should be able to hike output in the remainder of 2024 because operations in Australia, Ghana and Peru are either designed to produce more metal in the second half of the year or have overcome disruptions caused by the weather, Chief Executive Officer Mike Fraser said in an interview.