One strategist predicts that a resurgence in North American manufacturing will help drive the S&P/TSX Composite Index (TSX) higher next year, building on a monthslong rally that’s taken the benchmark Canadian stock index to record highs in 2024.
Ohsung Kwon, Canada and U.S. equity strategist with Bank of America Global Research, told BNN Bloomberg in a Wednesday interview that he expects the TSX to extend the impressive run it’s been on throughout the back half of this year.
“I think the TSX can continue to rally into 2025. I think the macro environment is still pretty favourable, not just for the TSX but equities in general,” he said, noting that expected strength in U.S. markets will likely benefit Canadian stocks.
“Obviously, there’s a lot of optimism being built after the election here in the U.S., but politics aside, I think the big driver of that bullishness and the recovery in fundamentals heading into 2025 is really going to be driven by the manufacturing cycle.”
Kwon said he thinks the “manufacturing economy is going to comeback” in a big way next year after two years of contraction in the industry, which he said was tied as the longest recession the sector had ever seen.
There are three main tailwinds set to prop up North American manufacturers in the coming months, Kwon argued.
“First of all, I think the destocking cycle of inventories, at least the worst of it is over. Number two, the election uncertainty that we had in the U.S., that’s over,” he said.
“And lastly, even though there’s still some uncertainty around rates, they are still down a lot from the peak of five per cent here in the U.S., so rate pressure has somewhat eased, and I think that’s really going to drive the manufacturing recovery into next year.”
Trump’s tariff threat
Kwon said that despite U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to place a 25 per cent tariff on Canadian good entering the U.S. on his first day in office if his border concerns aren’t addressed, he expects the two countries to eventually agree on a trade deal.
“Our house view is that Canada is going to be safe from those tariff threats, but the headline risks are real,” he said.
“And what we saw back in 2018 and 2019 was that whenever there were threats of higher tariffs from the U.S., Canadian equities typically underperformed during those periods versus the U.S.”
With that in mind, Kwon said the threats themselves could lead to increased volatility on the TSX next year, but he noted that the Trump administration will ultimately need to work with Canada if it hopes to achieve its goal of reshoring its industries.
“I think reshoring is really a North America story, and I think the setup is pretty interesting that we have a very strong consumer base in the U.S., we have cheap labour in Mexico, and we have all the commodities that we need in Canada,” he said.
“I think those rail mergers that we saw during Trump 1.0 and the renaming of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to USMCA, I think those are pretty telling signs that these three countries are really going to work together.”