Financial Services Roundup: Market Talk

The latest Market Talks covering Financial Services. Exclusively on Dow Jones Newswires at 4:20 ET, 12:20 ET and 16:50 ET.

1402 ET – Canadian home prices not only aren’t recovering, they continue to slide, the latest Teranet-National Bank data shows. The national house price index dipped 0.3% from May to June in seasonally adjusted terms and the composite index dropped 0.4%, a seventh consecutive fall to leave prices 4.3% below their year-earlier level. This weakness was despite an improvement in resale activity for a third straight month, National Bank says. Sales rose 0.5% in June but remain 19.8% below the historical average, which economist Kyle Dahms says suggests the improvement should be seen as a recovery from depressed levels rather than a return to underlying strength. Dahms says any price recovery is likely to be modest and uneven. (robb.stewart@wsj.com; @RobbMStewart)

1350 ET – Canada’s banks have carried the Toronto Stock Exchange to new heights, but valuations have reached levels far above what fundamentals can reasonably support, says Rosenberg Research’s David Rosenberg. His advice is for investors to consider rebalancing their oversize holdings. Rosenberg says the fundamentals for the banks are genuinely good, but probably can’t justify the roughly 33% rally for the six biggest lenders in 2026. The driver is credit losses shifting into reverse, resulting in lower provisions and higher earnings. Rosenberg says these kind of provision releases typically aren’t repeatable, yet the Big Six are now trading on an average roughly 15 times expected 2027 earnings versus a historical around 11 times. (robb.stewart@wsj.com)

1346 ET – Capital concentration among large alternative asset managers decreased during 1Q after six quarters of expansion, according to Canoe Intelligence, a provider of investment data-management systems. The top 50 private-fund managers by assets accounted for 48% of the total net asset value of investors’ holdings in 1Q, down from 51% in 4Q, while those managers’ share of investors’ new capital commitments dropped to 46% from 60%, Canoe’s data shows. “One quarter of deconcentration does not undo six quarters of consolidation,” but the decline in the share of new commitments may have future implications for large managers, Canoe says. That’s because “commitments reflect deliberate decisions made now for capital that will be called over the coming years,” it adds. (luis.garcia@wsj.com; @lhvgarcia)