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Oil Spikes, Mining Slips, and Market Signals on The Market this Month | S2-E3
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đ Episode 3 of The Market This Month is live â and weâre navigating a more volatile, selective market environment as 2026 unfolds.
Powered by the Canadian Securities Exchange in partnership with Stockhouse, host Anna Serin is joined by Bruce Campbell of StoneCastle Investment Management to break down the latest trends shaping junior and small-cap markets.
đĄ Spotlight topic: Oil volatility and energy stock strength
A sharp, geopolitically driven spike in oil is creating ripple effects across the energy sectorâwhile equities continue to show resilience and potential upside.
đ Also in this episode:
⢠Metals vs. equities: Stable prices, but mining stocks pulling back
⢠Capital flows: Strong financings and momentum post-PDAC
⢠Macro watch: Early warning signals turning more cautious
⢠Seasonality: Entering a historically stronger period for markets
⢠CSE activity: New listings and notable financings, including MAX Power
đŹ âEven if oil pulls back, energy stocks have shown strengthâsuggesting a tailwind from multiple angles.â â Bruce Campbell
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#AlwaysInvested #CapitalMarkets #SmallCaps #MarketUpdate #Commodities #EnergyStocks #MiningStocks #PublicMarkets #CSE
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The Canadian Securities Exchange presents your go-to stores for trends in junior and small cap markets. Each month, join host Anna Sarin, the financial expert Bruce Campbell, in partnership with Stocker.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to the Market This Month. I'm Anna Sarin, Director of Listings Development with the Canadian Securities Exchange, and you're joining us for the March 2026 edition. I'm joined today by my co-host Bruce Campbell of Stonecastle Investment Management as we dive into what's been driving Canadian and global markets this month. We've seen significant moves in oil over the past few weeks. Prices have been volatile, and that's rippling across the energy complex, impacting commodity fundamentals, capital spending plans, and which companies are positioned to outperform or fall behind as sentiment shifts. We'll break down what these moves mean for the commodity itself, as well as for producers, midstream players, and service companies. In metals, both precious and base, underlying commodity prices have remained relatively stable, but equity valuations have pulled back amid broader market volatility. That disconnect is creating both opportunity and risk, and later in the show will highlight where value might be emerging and where caution is warranted. From a top-down perspective, several warning signals have started to flash. Macro indicators, investor positioning, and sector breadth are all pointing to a more selective environment, tempering overall market enthusiasm. Seasonality is also coming into focus. Certain periods historically favor commodities and specific sectors, so we'll outline the key patterns to watch in the weeks ahead and how they could either amplify or counter current trends. On the Canadian Securities Exchange this month, we welcome several new listings, including Beaumont Exploration Corp., North America Home Finance Inc., and Revolve Renewable Power Corp. We also saw notable financings with MaxPower completing a $20 million brokered placement and sugarcopper raising $9.75 million through a private placement. Join us as we dive deeper into these themes and more in the March edition of the Market This Month. Bruce, thank you for joining us for the Market This Month March 2026 edition. This month, we saw some big moves in oil. What does that signal for the commodity and energy stocks going forward?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we have seen some really significant moves with oil, clearly based on everything that's happened with Iran. We had already started to see the price of the commodity moving up just a little bit before that. And I would imagine it was due to anticipation of what was happening. Now, when we see what's happened, oil made what would actually be a four-standard deviation move above the uh the 50-day moving average, which is really rare. We've only seen that a few times in history that it's got up to that level in such a short period of time. We went back and looked at what that meant for the commodity, but also for oil stocks. And it's quite interesting for sure. So the commodity itself, as you would suspect, it's a spike up, it tends to settle back down. So if you look at returns for the commodity over really any period from one month to uh to six months and 12 months, it's actually down over that period of time. So it really shouldn't surprise too many people that it would be down. Obviously, we don't know what's going to transpire. And maybe this time it is different, but you know, maybe it's not. But what was really fascinating was that even though the price of the commodity is down, the price of energy stocks, if you looked at it, uh measuring it based on the US energy stocks, were actually up over three months, six months, and a 12-month period. So even though oil had come down, the energy stocks had gone up. So it's giving us, you know, fairly strong clues as to what might happen with the energy stocks. And we had already, you know, we talked about it in the February uh market this month, but we had already started to see energy stocks moving even before any of this transpired, even before the commodity price really started to move in any significant way. So it seems like it's a tailwind from a couple different perspectives. We were already seeing that movement in energy stocks, and now we're also seeing what's happened with the commodity, and that's uh that that's potential for more of a move with these energy stocks as well.
SPEAKER_00I just want to remind our viewers, Bruce, OPEC, the price of oil is somewhat manufactured by OPEC, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the price of oil definitely is manufactured. I mean, they they set production limits both uh based on supply and demand and also a range of where they want to try to keep that commodity over a certain period of time. And and you know, with what's happened and all the production that has been shut down because of the invasion in Iran, then you know what you've seen is that the several countr countries have have talked about releasing from strategic petroleum reserves to try to manage that that price of oil. Uh, and and that really is is a difficult thing to do because of the fact that the world you know consumes around 100 million barrels of oil per day. And they're talking about you know only releasing, you know, three or four million barrels uh in total. It's it's not going to have much of an impact. Whereas whereas OPEC, they control the production. So they actually pump, you know, they'll decide to pump two or three more million barrels per day or cut it back, and that obviously has a supply and demand impact on what happens with the price.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's lots of moving parts that move oil around, but that's interesting how it's reacting with energy stocks. So I guess this is a tough question, but with the geopolitical and the threat of war we're seeing right now, do you have any advice for investors of how to protect themselves in these moments or how to find opportunities?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's a couple of different things to that for sure. You would, you know, it depends on the type of investor and your mindset and your time frame. So a peer value investor is going to look at this as a great opportunity because with volatility, things tend to get pushed around to extremes, both from a stock price, from a commodity price standpoint. And if you're a pure value investor, you can use that volatility as things get pushed down to take advantage of, and then also to trim back when things go up. If you're a shorter term investor, or if you're you tend to not be as much value oriented and probably more growth oriented, then you do need to be probably more cautious with times like this because the volatility spikes can really push things around and your entry points then become much more important, especially when when we see the volatility that we've had, where you can see you know 10% moves in commodities and you can see 10% moves in individual stock prices intraday, not even day two day. And so it's your entry price is is significantly more important if you shorten the time frame or you're a more conservative investor. Whereas if you're a long-term, longer term investor or you're a value investor, then it's not as important. You can use that volatility and still potentially have a short-term error, not error, but just maybe not get the best pricing and still be able to make money longer term.
SPEAKER_00Wonderful. Okay, thanks for your guidance. And of course, professional guidance is always helpful in these moments. Okay, let's jump into metal prices. They've been holding steady, but mining stocks have pulled back. Is this a normal reaction to that type of volatility?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we really have seen the the metal stocks bounce around a lot. You've seen the the commodity prices maybe more so with silver than with gold. Gold's held fair fairly steady above above 5,000 through a lot of the volatility. Silver's chopped around a lot more. I mean, it had it spike up to 120 and then pulled back into the 75 range. And it's tended to, you know, to kind of be bouncing around between, call it 75 and 95 just over the last few weeks. But we have seen a fairly significant move in some of the stock prices. Even when you look at what's happened with the commodity, if you look at gold, for instance, some of the gold companies, they're down, you know, they'll be down 10 or or 15%, sometimes even more than that, off of their highs, even though at the same time the price of the um the underlying commodity is is only off, you know, in some cases, two to kind of five percent. And that's normal. You would expect that. Clearly, the um the markets doesn't like uncertainty in any capacity. And with the with the underlying stocks, they're gonna move more based on cash flow. But the other part of it is that, you know, in when you're mining, one of the the big um costs that you have is really energy in order to operate that mine or to produce the the production. And when oil's spiked up the way it is, that just is gonna impact what happens with a lot of those producers. And so even though um they're still getting a good price for their commodity if they're selling it here, they might have or could potentially have, and that's what the model or the markets start to model in is what the costs will be for uh for those companies to produce it going forward. And so that's why there's that extra volatility. And we've talked about the volatility indexes before, and through through all this uh uncertainty with um with Iran and the US, we've really seen the volatility indexes both for oil and for uh for metals, and even the bonds have have jumped up significantly. And anytime that's happening, the movements tend to be bigger from a percentage standpoint, both up and down.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. You know, it was interesting. We're just coming off the heels of the PDAC conference in Toronto, which we talked about last month, and we had our annual investor luncheon at the CSC. I don't think we had an issue or present that wasn't on the heels of anywhere from a $10 to $25 million financing. So the one thing we are seeing is money flow to the exploration. To me, this is very exciting because that's enough money to really advance some of these properties in a material way. Where the last ones at the bus stop, do you think there's still some opportunity for growth within this sector?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's gonna be significant opportunity in this sector for sure. Because, you know, even if you just held the commodity price in a in a range of where it is now, say 10% within the range, there's gonna be projects that then become profitable that wouldn't have been when, you know, the commodity prices were 25 or 30 or 50% lower than where they are. So there's gonna be that opportunity. There's also probably gonna be, I mean, you've started to see this, some MA opportunity as well. So bigger companies, it's sometimes faster and in a lot of cases more economic for them to go out and buy projects or buy companies than it is to actually go through all the work that it takes to find the discovery and then get it uh permitted, get it to production, and get all the kinks out of production and get it, you know, running at full capacity. And so you'll probably see some opportunity there. And then there's always that recycle, right? As a company gets taken out, investors then start to look for where's the next opportunity. And so they're always looking to recycle, and there's always new projects, and with the commodity prices where they are, it makes projects that maybe weren't feasible before feasible again.
SPEAKER_00I love that. Okay. Your top-down dashboard is showing some warning signals. What is starting to flash caution?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, if you remember, we have this top-down dashboard where we look at different markets, we also look at different sectors. And one of the things that we've seen really kind of over the last uh, you know, four weeks, so started in in kind of the February timeframe, is that in the US in particular, um, the US large cap markets, so the S P 500 and the NASDAQ, we started to see these early warning signals go negative. And when that happens, it doesn't mean that the market's going to immediately sell or drop down. Um, but what it does tell us is that we tend to want to be more cautious with what we're doing and watch, you know, a lot with a lot more attention on where stocks are and what's happening. And so it wouldn't surprise me if, you know, we've seen a fair bit of volatility, if we continue to see that volatility, because that's usually a sign when this early warning indicator changes that we're starting to see just a money flow change. So there's not as strong a money flow or as much money flow. And when you take out that extra money flow, it can mean the volatility is enhanced because any new money coming in or moving out has that much more impact because it's it's just a larger amount in a you know in a smaller market. So we're um we're just being a little bit more cautious here. We've raised a little bit of cash in our portfolio and we'll continue to just monitor where the other indicators that we follow go. If they were to start to break down, then at that point in time we'd move, you know, more from kind of a neutral offense to a neutral defense stance with our portfolios.
SPEAKER_00I mean, the asset allocation and having an eye on that movement is very important for all investors, right?
SPEAKER_01It's very important and it's very important no matter what sector you're in as well, because uh that has an impact on where things are and and where things go is is really that that sector uh that sector movement in addition to the overall markets.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Okay, from a seasonality standpoint, what should investors be watching right now?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, seasonality always plays a huge role in markets and and uh you know this year doesn't look like it's a whole lot different than than other years. So if you look at kind of the big picture seasonality, the markets tend to be the strongest from the fall into the spring. So that you know is typically kind of that October-ish time frame to kind of the May-June time frame. And then inside of that, there tends to be shorter term periods where markets can have bigger moves inside of that. And typically when we look at kind of the February to May timeframe, we tend to see fairly strong in January and then a bit of a lull sort of mid-February to kind of mid-March. And then following the mid-March timeframe, we we see strength again up until really the end of May. And so we're heading into that stronger period. We've just come through the weaker period, and coincidentally, a lot of this volatility around Iran has happened exactly when we would have expected from the seasonal standpoint. And the way again, how we have to look at seasonality is it's not that it's um, you know, it's it's not that it's um it's the it's a forecast as far as weather goes. It's more thought of as climate. So you know, you know, this is the climate, and the weather forecast can always change, you know, day to day based on the individual conditions. But we know that this is the overall climate, you know, knowing that it's spring or summer or winter, even though it could be raining or sunny on any given day.
SPEAKER_00And that's a really good distinction. And I think really important thing for people to understand. You've brought up around quite a few times in our chat today, and I think there's a lot going on for people to absorb globally. What should we as investors be thinking about going into the next month?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, clearly we want to be watching what's happening with that situation geopolitically. Um, we're also starting to get one step closer to uh the US, um, Mexico, Canada, free trade renegotiation. So that could be potential again for more volatility in certain sectors. So we want to keep our eye on that. And then the last thing is, you know, we talked a little bit about the dashboard and what we're seeing there. We just want to see if there's going to be strength or weakness from there because then that will have an impact on the seasonal, again, going back to seasonality. If we were to see things continue to weaken from the dashboard and see different time frames where we saw weakness, then we'll be wanting to be more cautious with our portfolio, especially given that we're heading into that seasonally weaker period, which is you know the summer through kind of the early fall.
SPEAKER_00All right. Well, that's certainly something to pay attention to. It's always so lovely to chat with you, and we are heading into spring, so hopefully some nicer climate ahead. Thank you so much, as always, Bruce, for joining me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thanks so much.