12:06 PM EDT, 04/10/2025 (MT Newswires) -- The Toronto Stock Exchange is down 870 points, after gaining over 1200 points on Wednesday.

Energy, technology and miners are the biggest decliners.

Although U.S. President Donald Trump paused most of his "reciprocal" tariffs on Wednesday, his other massive import taxes continue to inflict significant damage on global trade.

The fluctuating trend in overall trading is being reflected in commodity prices. Oil prices turned sharply lower early on Thursday following a day-prior rise of nearly 5% after Trump partially backed off his blanket tariff threats, but hiked levies on China as the world's two largest economies descend into a trade war. Natural gas prices fell ahead of fresh inventory data as mild spring weather cuts into demand.

But gold traded higher.

BMO Economics in its morning note, noted Trump announced a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday, sending equities rallying sharply. Tariffs on China will remain (and rise to 125% in retaliation to their retaliation), but stiff reciprocal tariffs of as high as 50% on a wide range of trading partners will be scaled down to the baseline 10% rate. BMO's Sal Guatieri noted that, not accounting for sectoral carve outs, the original trade-weighted average reciprocal rate of 25.3% still rises to 30.9% with China at 125%.

Looking through the noise, BMO said the S&P 500 is now down just over 7% on the year; the TSX is off roughly 4%. Some areas of the market (e.g., U.S. tech and consumer discretionary) are still down more than 15%, while consumer staples, health care and Canadian materials (i.e., gold) are positive on the year, it added.

According to Rosenberg Research, a recession is still a major concern. It said: "What hasn't ended is the sour taste of the past week and the fact that none of us really know what policy bombshell headline we are going to face next. We managed to avoid a disastrous situation if the market turmoil was allowed to continue, and for that we should probably be thankful and breathing a sigh of relief. But to assume that a recession has been avoided, as Goldman Sachs just did, is very likely a mistake."

Elsewhere, Thierry Wizman, Global FX & Rates Strategist at Macquarie, said "don't be fooled by Wednesday's rally". De-globalization is still a thing, marked by the U.S.'s attempt to de-risk' from China with 125% tariffs, he added. "What happened yesterday merely set a better stage for the building of bloc of countries to counter China, but that still implies deglobalization, and hence lower global 'growth' - bad for stocks."

Wizman also wrote: "But what we think everyone can agree upon is that yesterday's actions revealed the reciprocal tariffs to be 'transactional', meaning that they are flexible, regardless of where the greatest pain from them might be. Indeed, yesterday's pause wasn't so much about reducing overall tariffs.

"Yet despite this," Wizman continued, "we're not enamored of the thesis of a CNY devaluation coming soon. From China's perspective, a devaluation may carry too much risk vs. reward, especially with the US maybe countering with financial sanctions, and because it is an 'un-targeted' measure. A devaluation might make more sense after China's been left with less to lose, i.e., with diminished trade volume with all other countries, should those countries put their own high tariffs on China."