Equities in Canada’s largest centre fell on Wednesday ahead of a widely expected rate hike by the Bank of Canada after hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation data slammed global markets and sparked fears of aggressive monetary policy tightening by the Federal Reserve.
The S&P/TSX lost 125.43 points to begin Wednesday at 18,553.21.
The Canadian dollar jumped 0.05 cents to 76.77 cents U.S.
Rogers Communications says it will be crediting
customers with the equivalent of five days service after the Canadian telecoms operator suffered a major outage that paralyzed the country's banking and emergency services last week.
Rogers shares gained nine cents to $60.33
The Bank of Canada today increased its target for the overnight rate to 2.5%, with the Bank Rate at 2.75% and the deposit rate at 2½%.
ON BAYSTREET
The TSX Venture Exchange dropped 2.79 points to 589.91.
All but three of the 12 TSX subgroups were lower, as health-care slid 2%, industrials fell 1.6%, and information technology dipped 1.3%.
The three gainers proved to be gold, up 0.4%, energy, inching ahead 0.2%, and materials, eking up 0.04%.
ON WALLSTREET
Stocks slid on Wednesday after June inflation data came in hotter-than-expected, contributing to growing fears that the Federal Reserve will get more aggressive in its fight to tame rising prices.
The Dow Jones Industrials stumbled 357.82 points, or 1.2%, to 30,623.51.
The S&P 500 ditched 43.67 points, or 1.1%, to 3,775.54.
The NASDAQ Composite fell 138.13 points, or 1.2%, to 11,126.60.
Shares of Salesforce, Walt Disney, Boeing and Visa slid more than 2% each as the Dow fell. Just two stocks gained on the day.
Battered tech shares Nvidia, Netflix and Alphabet slipped more than 1% as growth concerns mounted, while Twitter’s stock rose 6.4% after the social media company sued Elon Musk.
All S&P 500 sectors declined on Wednesday, with the exception of energy. The sector rose more than 1% boosted by shares of Devon Energy, Occidental Petroleum and Marathon Oil.
Along with the inflation report, investors continued to monitor second-quarter earnings for clues into the health of U.S. companies.
Delta Air Lines shares dropped 7.2% after posting mixed results. Airline stocks including United, American Airlines and Southwest dipped more than 3%.
In other news, investors are looking ahead to results from major banks including JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley slated for Thursday.
The consumer price index rose 9.1% on a year-over-year basis in June, coming in even higher than May’s 8.6% reading, which was the biggest increase since 1981. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones’ had anticipated an 8.8% print.
Core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, came in at 5.9% and above the 5.7% estimate.
Treasury prices gained a bit of turf, lowering yields to 3.03% from Tuesday’s 2.97%. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.
Oil prices inched up 18 cents to $96.02 U.S. a barrel.
Gold prices hesitated $3.90 to $1,720.90 U.S. an ounce.
Dow Sinks on Inflation Report
