The Toronto stock market was little changed Tuesday as traders look to a two-day U.S. Federal Reserve meeting and what the central bank may decide to do about cutting back on asset purchases.
The S&P/TSX composite index gained but 0.54 points to greet noon Tuesday at 13,184.95
The Canadian dollar dipped 0.15 cents to 94.23 cents U.S.
Gains on the Toronto market were led by tech stocks as Constellation Software rose $3.23 to $209.92.
The base metals sector was slightly lower with March copper unchanged at $3.33 U.S. a pound.
In corporate news, Saputo Inc. says it's willing to pay substantially more for Australia's Warrnambool Cheese and Butter if it can get as much as 90% of its stock. The company is maintaining its base offer at AU$9 per share but says it will pay as much as AU$9.60 cash per share if it gets at least 90 per cent of WCB's stock. That would value the deal at $510 million.
Saputo shares rose a penny to $47.18.
Hudson's Bay Co.'s chief operating officer, Donald Watros, will become the retailing company's president in February. Watros is a former chief administrative officer of Saks Fifth Avenue, which HBC acquired in November for about $2.9 billion. HBC shares were down a dime to $18.20.
On the economic calendar, Statistics Canada reported this morning that manufacturing sales increased 1.0% in October over the month before, contrary to projections of a 0.3% loss. The agency says sales thus reached their highest level since May of last year.
ON BAYSTREET
The TSX Venture Exchange dipped 0.73 points to 889.93
All but four of the 14 TSX subgroups were lower midday, weighed mostly by gold, down 0.6%, health-care, down 0.4%, industrials, off 0.2%.
The four gainers were led by information technology, up 2.2%, while consumer discretionaries were up 0.4% and global base metals were up 0.2%.
ON WALLSTREET
Markets were flat Tuesday morning, with investors still trying to guess what the Federal Reserve has in store after its key policy meeting wraps up on Wednesday.
The Dow Jones Industrials had faded 27.26 points by noon ET, to 15,875.31
The S&P 500 index ditched 7.28 points to 1,779.26. The NASDAQ gave back 11.01 points to 4,018.51
In corporate news, Facebook popped over 2% to a new all-time high after the social network said it is rolling out a feature that will allow advertisers to play videos in users' news feeds.
Shares of Herbalife spiked 2% after surging nearly 10% Monday when investors got word that PricewaterhouseCoopers' re-audits of the company's financial results came back clean. Herbalife has been battling accusations of financial wrongdoing from activist investor Bill Ackman, who has repeatedly called it a pyramid scheme and has a big short bet against the stock.
Boeing was up about 1.5% after the aerospace giant announced a 50% dividend increase and $10-billion U.S. stock buyback program.
Investors are eager to find out when the Fed might begin to cut back its massive stimulus program. Some think the so-called taper may come sooner than expected.
One economist is predicting that the Fed will announce plans on Wednesday to cut back its monthly bond buying by anywhere from $5 billion to $15 billion U.S. from its current pace of $85 billion U.S. a month.
Prices for 10-year U.S. Treasuries inched ahead, lowering yields to 2.85% from Monday’s 2.88%. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.
Oil prices moved down five cents to $97.43 U.S. a barrel.
Gold prices skidded $13.80 to $1,230.90 U.S. an ounce.
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