“We think that the old economy is going to be the big winner from AI,” he said, adding that sectors with larger weightings in Canada — like financials, materials and energy — will eventually enjoy efficiency benefits from AI without spending the money to develop it.
Tech companies account for just 7.7 per cent of the S&P/TSX Composite, a weighting that is smaller than financials, energy, industrials and materials. Still, it has topped the leader board so far this year in Toronto., which is up 77 per cent, did catch at least part of the AI wave after launching a new AI shopping assistant powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI in May when it released its first quarter results.
, Purpose Investments Chief Investment Officer Greg Taylor said by phone, noting the performance gap between the S&P 500 and the S&P Equal Weight Index has widened sharply in the first half of the year. Stocks in Toronto have performed more like the equal weight S&P 500 this year, he said.Article content
By contrast, three of Canada’s largest market sectors — financials, energy and materials — have “vastly underperformed this year,” AGF Investments Vice-President and portfolio manager Mike Archibald said, adding those cyclical sectors have weighed on Canadian indexes.have been range-bound below US$75 a barrel, base metals have struggled to rise amid Chinese economic weakness and “the banking crisis obviously wasn’t helpful,” Archibald said.
To be sure, consensus estimates on Toronto’s Bay Street has the TSX rising 18 per cent from here, compared with Wall Street expectations of a 9.5 per cent gain for the S&P 500.