Equities in Canada’s largest market slipped in early trade on Thursday, weighed down by heavyweight financial stocks as U.S. bank earnings season kicked off, with losses offset by gains for gold miners.
The S&P/TSX Composite Index lost 30.37 points to open the last day of a short week at 15,618.03
The Canadian dollar was unchanged at 75.49 cents U.S.
Markets in North America are closed Friday for Good Friday.
Qualcomm said on Wednesday it was asked to refund BlackBerry $814.9 million in an arbitration ruling over royalties for certain past sales.
BlackBerry shares dropped 11 cents from multi-month highs of yesterday to $11.74.
RBC cut the rating on Medical Facilities to sector perform from outperform. Medical shares dipped 49 cents, or 2.8%, to $17.25.
Morgan Stanley raised the target price on Rogers Communications to $61.00 from $54.00. Rogers shares faded five cents to $60.05.
RBC cut the rating on TFI International to sector perform from outperform. TFI shares erased 50 cents, or 1.7%, to $29.57.
On the economic slate, Statistics Canada’s new housing price rose 0.4% in February over the previous month. The agency said Ontario accounted for most of the gain, as new house prices increased in all 10 of its surveyed metropolitan areas.
What’s more, manufacturing in this country decreased during the same month, though not by as much as some analysts had feared.
The agency said manufacturing sales edged down 0.2% in February to $53.6 billion, following three consecutive monthly increases.
ON BAYSTREET
The TSX Venture Exchange eked up 1.04 points to 830.31
Seven of the 12 TSX subgroups were pointed downward to begin the day, with gold slumping 0.9%, utilities down 0.8%, and materials weaker by 0.6%.
The five gainers were led by consumer staples, nicking up 0.3%, information technology, better by 0.2%, and industrials, inching ahead 0.1%
ON WALLSTREET
U.S. stocks traded flat on Thursday as investors kept on buying safer assets, while big banks kicked off the earnings season.
The Dow Jones Industrials nosed up 6.03 points to begin Thursday at 20,597.89, with Goldman Sachs contributing the most losses and Walt Disney the most gains.
The S&P 500 inched up 1.44 points to 2,346.37, with information technology outperforming
The NASDAQ Composite recovered 14 points to 5,850.16
JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo all reported quarterly results on Thursday. JPMorgan easily topped expectations, while Citigroup also posted better-than-expected results. Wells Fargo posted mixed results.
In economic news, jobless claims came in at 234,000, below expectations, while March Producer Price Index declined 0.1%. Consumer sentiment was set to come out later in the morning.
Investors grew nervous this week as overseas tensions between the U.S. and Russia heated up as State Secretary Rex Tillerson flew to Moscow to meet his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov.
Also, Wall Street grew jittery as it gauged where the Trump administration's priorities were. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump told Fox Business he wanted to repeal and replace Obamacare before moving on to tax reform.
Trump told the Wall Street Journal later on Wednesday he thought the dollar was getting "too strong." The comment sent the dollar index to its lowest level of the month against a basket of currencies
Prices for the benchmark 10-year Treasury note were unchanged, keeping yields at Wednesday’s 2.27%.
Oil prices gave back 25 cents at $53.36 U.S. a barrel
Gold prices gained $7.20 at $1,285.30 U.S. an ounce.
