Stock markets in Canada’s biggest market opened flat on Wednesday, with falls among gold miners offset by gains for financial stocks and marijuana producers.
The S&P/TSX Composite Index eked up 0.87 points to begin Wednesday’s session at 16,299.75
The Canadian dollar inched up 0.08 cents at 80.56 cents U.S.
Imperial Capital cut the rating on Absolute Software to in-line from outperform. Absolute shares were unchanged at $6.93.
National Bank of Canada initiated coverage on Troilus Gold with an outperform rating. Troilus opened 10 cents lower, or 4.4%, to $2.15.
The Bank of Canada did as expected Wednesday morning and raised rates to 1.25% on the back of strong jobs growth, even amid uncertainty around the fate of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Bank Rate is correspondingly 1.5% and the deposit rate is 1%
ON BAYSTREET
The TSX Venture Exchange recovered 2.04 points to 890.31
The 12 TSX subgroups were divided evenly between gainers and losers, the former group led by health-care, up 0.4%, while consumer discretionary stocks moved up 0.3% and real-estate increased 0.2%.
The half-dozen laggards were weighed most by gold, down 0.8%, materials, tailing off 0.5%, and industrials, down 0.3%.
ON WALLSTREET
Stocks opened higher on Wednesday following the release of stronger-than-expected quarterly results from some of the biggest U.S. companies.
The Dow Jones Industrials jumped 125.68 points to 25,918.54.
The S&P 500 gained 9.21 points to 2,785.63, with materials and tech as the best-performing sectors.
The NASDAQ composite index recovered 27.18 points to 7,250.86
Bank of America reported adjusted quarterly earnings that surpassed analyst estimates. U.S. Bancorp also posted better-than-expected results.
Earnings season is off to a strong start thus far. Of the S&P 500 companies that had reported as of Friday, 69% have surpassed earnings-per-share estimates while 85% have beaten expectations on the top line
Shares of Juno Therapeutics spiked 51.5% higher after The Wall Street Journal reported the company was in talks to be acquired by Celgene.
Prices for the benchmark 10-year Treasury note sagged, raising yields to 2.55% from Tuesday’s 2.54%. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.
Oil prices dropped 10 cents a barrel to $63.63 U.S.
Gold prices sank $1.50 to $1,335.60 U.S. an ounce.
