Bay Street stocks remained in the green in Wednesday afternoon trading, led by strength in the resource sectors. Some encouraging U.S. economic news provided a spark.
The S&P/TSX Composite Index advanced 97.27 points to end the day’s trading at 11,636.90.
Mining stocks gained 2.8%, with First Quantum rising 5.3% to $84.02, HudBay added 4.2% to $15.00 and Teck Resources increased 3.2% to $37.44
Materials stocks gained, as did and gold stocks. Seagold up 5.4% to $28.38, Iamgold added 2.9% to $20.76 and Agnico-Eagle Mines was up 1.6% to $68.03.
Labopharm jumped 9.7% to $1.69 after the company said it has entered into a standby equity distribution agreement or SEDA with YA Global Master.
Stantec gained 1.5% to $26.40 after the company said that it has received a major contract from the U.S. General Services Administration to provide 3D laser scanning and surveying services for federal building projects across the country.
The contract is worth $30 million U.S. over the next five years.
GLG Life Tech Corp. announced the completion of its equity offering. The company issued and sold 3.625 million common shares at $7.60 U.S. per share for aggregate gross proceeds of approximately $27.5 million U.S. and net proceeds to the company of approximately $25.8 million U.S. The stock dropped 2.6% to $8.25.
Bank of Montreal added 0.5% to $53.42 after the stock had its target price raised to $63 from $62 at RBC Capital Markets, which left BMO's rating at "outperform".
Yamana Gold had its target price raised to $15 from $14 at RBC Capital Markets. Its rating remained at "outperform". The stock was up 1.5% to $14.49
Thomson Reuters climbed 1.1% after the stock was initiated "equal weight" by Barclays Capital with a target price of $36.50. The stock gained 0.6% to $33.04.
LM Ericsson Telephone Wednesday said it will buy certain assets of GSM/GSM-R business of Canadian network solutions company Nortel Networks for a purchase price of $70 million U.S.
The Canadian dollar grew 1.21 cents to 95.66 cents U.S.
ON BAYSTREET
All but one of the 14 TSX subgroups ended the day in positive territory. Metals and mining proved the strongest group, up 2.6%, materials and gold were ahead 1.9% each.
The only group missing out on all the fun was health-care, which ended up 0.8% sicker.
The TSX Venture Exchange gained 22.74 points to 1,435.15, while the Nasdaq Canada picked up 7.58 points to 663.25
ON WALLSTREET
In New York, stocks gained Wednesday afternoon in a thinly-traded session ahead of Thanksgiving, as investors welcomed a bigger-than-expected drop in weekly jobless claims but showed caution ahead of Thanksgiving.
The Dow Jones Industrials finished the day up 30.69 points to 10,464.40. The S&P 500 index advanced 4.98 points to 1,110.63, while the Nasdaq gained 6.87 points to 2,175.65.
Because of the holiday, all the week's news was jammed into the first three days, with nothing on the docket Friday.
The combination of a three-day onslaught of economic news and some pre-holiday wariness was keeping investors from moving much Wednesday, according to some experts.
Next week is a doozy, with reports due on manufacturing, auto sales, housing and the labour market.
Monday's trading will be heavily influenced by how the holiday shopping period kicks off. Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and Cyber Monday, the first work day after the holiday, are critical barometers for the health of the consumer at the start of the biggest shopping period of the year.
Most economists think the recession is over. Yet rampant joblessness, lower household income and personal wealth and a still-tight lending environment should temper the benefit of retailers' discounts.
Overall spending is expected to hit a range of between 1% lower than a year ago and 1.5% higher.
Economically speaking, new home sales rose to a 430,000 annual unit rate in October from a 405,000 unit rate in September. Economists expected sales to dip to a 404,000 annual unit rate.
Personal income and spending showed a surprise rise in October, according to a Commerce Department report released in the early morning.
Income rose 0.2% after rising 0.2% in September. Economists thought it would rise 0.1%, according to Briefing.com estimates. Spending was up 0.7% after falling 0.6% in the previous month.
A separate report showed that orders for durable goods fell 0.6% in October, surprising economists who were expecting orders to rise 0.5%. Orders for goods meant to last three years or more gained 2% in September.
Things appeared a bit brighter on the job front Wednesday as the number of people filing for first-time unemployment claims fell to 466,000 last week, the lowest level since September 2008.
Consensus estimates were for initial jobless claims to be 500,000, according to Briefing.com.
AIG CEO Robert Benmosche has officially agreed to a compensation package that could reach $10.5 million U.S., the company announced late Tuesday.
Treasury prices shot up during the afternoon, lowering the yields on the benchmark 10-year note to 3.26% from Tuesday’s 3.30%. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.
The price of a barrel of oil gained $1.94 to $77.74 U.S.
Gold prices raced ahead $21 to $1,188 U.S.
