It’s shaping up to be a rather muted open in trading during what’s been a hectic week on equity markets. Futures are holding near breakeven as we enter the Friday trading session to cap off a week where we saw wild swings due to concerns over contagion risks from SVB’s collapse, the continued saga over at Credit Suisse, and of course, the backdrop over rising rates and what the U.S. Federal Reserve will do at its rate decision next week. That said, all lines are subject to change – today is triple witching day, when trillions of dollars worth of options expire, which often prompts spikes in volatility, so we’ll see how the session plays out.
REPSOL SCRAPS EAST-COAST LNG EXPORT CONCEPT
Looks like Canada’s fastest potential route to a liquefied natural gas export terminal on the east coast is dead in the water. Credit to Bloomberg’s Brian Platt on this scoop – Spanish energy firm Repsol is abandoning an idea to potentially expand its current import facility near Saint John, N.B. to also export LNG after a feasibility study showed the economics simply wouldn’t work, given how costly it would be to convert existing infrastructure to bring gas in from Western Canada. The potential for such an expansion came into sharp relief last year as Europe came to grips with the energy crisis due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but geography (and to a degree, pipeline politics) posed too great a hurdle – most of Canada’s natural gas is produced in Alberta and British Columbia, making it more logical to export from the West Coast.
BEHIND THE SCENES ON THE ‘BLACKBERRY’ MOVIE SET
The Oscars may be behind us, but this one’s a treat – our David George-Cosh has some behind-the-scenes reporting from the set of the upcoming biopic on the rise and fall of Canadian smartphone innovator BlackBerry. The film documents how the Waterloo-based company both invented and subsequently lost the smartphone ecosystem to Apple and its ilk, a cautionary tale at a time when Canada continues to look for ways to set itself apart when it comes to innovation, particularly in the tech scene. Stay tuned for Dave’s reporting on the air and at BNNBloomberg.ca.
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