May continued its choppy uptrend. Albeit only slightly, the markets in North America squeaked out small gains. Inflation is still hanging around 3% in the U.S., while Canada is a little below this. It could turn out to be a summer of back-and-forth markets, as good and bad numbers on inflation run through the system.

The story remains for semiconductors and big technology companies in regard to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its potential impacts. I see this wave of instant demand starting to lose steam. I have seen this before, where things need to catch up and here is what I mean by this. Share prices have a huge amount of future growth already built in and, should this falter, it presents a good amount of risk. For this reason, we will look for other places rather than get caught up in this momentum.

Personally, I like the offshoots of this phenomenon. That being, future power demands to run data centres, as an example. Copper, that will be used in data centres, and power upgrades, to name just a couple of trends that appear to be developing. This whole AI story is still in the early stages, and we are still learning the potential benefits and pitfalls as this unfolds.

Everyone keeps talking about the potential for rate cuts, however, it is not yet in the economic numbers to suggest it should happen soon. This means the U.S. economy is still fine and handling the previous rate increases. This is good news; however, in Canada, we are showing signs of slowing, and the potential is there to cut interest rates ahead of the U.S. That said, our policy makers have to be careful cutting our rates before the U.S. Federal Reserve (the Fed) does.

There also remains the ongoing global conflicts, which are always a cause for concern but, overall, a lack-of-news summer appears to be on the horizon. The market will wobble through into the fall, and the very interesting upcoming U.S. presidential election.