Canada's main stock straddled the breakeven mark on Monday, led by financial and industrial shares, after an outage halted trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Friday.
The S&P/TSX Composite Index poked 3.09 points to move into noon hour at 15,672.02
The Canadian dollar gained 0.27 cents to 77.95 cents U.S.
TMX Group Ltd, which operates the Toronto Stock Exchange and smaller Canadian trading platforms, said in a statement on Saturday that the failure of data storage equipment caused the outage. Shares of TMX Group Ltd were down 2.5%
Shares of Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto-Dominion bank were up around 0.4% each, providing the biggest boost to the financial index.
Also helping the main index was the industrials group, boosted by Air Canada, which gained 1.6% after reporting a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss.
Shares of TransCanada Corp fell 1% after the company reported first-quarter results on Friday.
Prem Watsa's Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited declined 0.8% after Toys "R" Us (Canada) Ltd on Friday received U.S. and Canadian court approval to sell itself to the company.
The largest percentage gainer on the TSX was Prometic Life Scan after the company said its primary immunodeficiency treatment met the main goal in a late-stage study.
The largest decliner was Detour Gold Corp after brokerages cut their price targets on the stock.
On the economic front, Statistics Canada said its Industrial Product Price Index increased 0.8% in March, mainly due to higher prices for energy and petroleum products and pulp and paper products.
The Raw Materials Price Index rose 2.1%, primarily due to higher prices for crude energy products.
ON BAYSTREET
The TSX Venture Exchange added 0.37 points by noon Monday to 784.13
Seven of 12 TSX subgroups were negative, with gold off 1.9%, while materials and consumer staples each down 0.8%
The five gainers were led by health-care, up 3.2%, information technology, better by 1.2%, and industrials, ahead 0.2%.
ON WALLSTREET
Stocks pared gains in late morning trade Monday, amid a drop in Microsoft shares.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average stayed positive 47.91 points to 24,359.10. Boeing contributed the most to declines on the index, while McDonald's and Apple had the greatest positive impact.
The S&P 500 slid 5.28 points to 2,664.63, with telecommunication leading seven sectors lower.
The NASDAQ retreated 34.21 points to 7,085.59, weighed by a decline of 1.5% in shares of Microsoft.
Logistics company Prologis is acquiring DCT Industrial Trust for $8.4 billion in an all-stock deal. DCT Industrial's shares popped more than 11.5%. Marriott Vacations, the hotel chain's timeshare business, is also buying rival ILG for $4.7 billion.
T-Mobile also said Sunday it agreed to buy Sprint for $26.5 billion. Meanwhile, shares of Andeavor jumped 16.7% after Marathon Petroleum agreed to acquire it for $23 billion.
In earnings, Dow component McDonald's rose 4.9% after reporting better-than-expected earnings and revenue. Botox-maker Allergan also posted a better-than-expected profit for the previous quarter.
Of the S&P 500 companies that have reported through Monday morning, 79.3% have reported stronger-than-forecast earnings, according to FactSet.
More than 100 S&P 500 companies are scheduled to report earnings this week, including Apple and Mondelez International.
In economic news, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index posted last month its biggest year-over-year gain since February 2017. The so-called core PCE — which strips out food and energy — jumped 1.9% through March. The core PCE is the Federal Reserve's preferred measure of inflation.
Elsewhere, pending home sales barely rose as buyers struggled to afford what little supply is available.
Prices for the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose, reducing yields to 2.94% from Friday’s 2.96%. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.
Oil prices gained 11 cents a barrel to $68.21 U.S.
Gold prices lurched lower $7.70 to $1,315.70 U.S. an ounce.
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