The Toronto stock market was little changed early Tuesday afternoon as Scotiabank handed in a better-than-expected earnings report and commodity prices weakened.
The S&P/TSX composite index ended the day down 45.13 points to 11,918.71.
Scotiabank turned in a first-quarter profit of $988-million, up 17% from a year earlier.
Scotiabank said that was the equivalent of 91 cents a diluted share or 93 cents on a cash basis, five cents a share better than analysts had forecast. Revenue came in at $3.9 billion, also above expectations.
Provisions for credit losses were $371 million, down from $420 million in the prior quarter.
Scotiabank's shares were down 72 cents at $49.38, but that was after having risen over the past week as earnings reports from other banks lifted financials.
Scotiabank was the last of the big banks to report quarterly earnings. All save Royal Bank handed in earnings that beat analyst expectations.
Canada’s five biggest banks saw their profits soar in the first quarter compared to the previous year when the recession battered earnings. Combined, they raked in $5.09 billion in profits in the quarter.
Among energy issues, Suncor Energy declined 61 cents to $31.42 while Canadian Oil Sands Trust slid 46 cents to $27.69.
The gold sector was down as Kinross Gold Corp. faded 31 cents to $19.05.
The base metals sector eased as May copper was unchanged at $3.41 U.S. a pound. Teck Resources was down 58 cents at $40.99.
The tech sector was supportive, with Celestica ahead seven cents at $11.08 and CGI gaining 20 cents to $15.23.
Bombardier Inc. has cancelled a plan to buy back up to $550 million U.S. of its outstanding debt securities and issue new notes. The transportation giant said that "current market conditions are such that the offering is unattractive and unsatisfactory to Bombardier at this time."
Its shares were down 22 cents at $5.87.
Shares in Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., Canada’s largest convenience store operator, lost $1.15 to $18.89 as it reported its third-quarter profits fell to $54.8 million U.S. from $71.1 million as the company was hit with lower fuel revenues in the United States.
Major Drilling Group International Inc. shares were down 99 cents to $26.93 as the company narrowed its fiscal 2010 third-quarter loss to $4.5 million or 19 cents a share from $5.1 million or 21 cents in the comparable 2009 period. Revenue for the three months ended Jan. 31 was $72.5 million, down from $87.4 million the previous year.
The cautious trading on markets Tuesday came 12 months after the market hit bottom in the depths of the financial crisis, which was sparked by the collapse of the U.S. housing sector. Stocks have surged since hitting multi-year lows on March 9 of last year, with the turnaround starting a day later when U.S. bank Citigroup said it was turning a profit.
Since then, evidence of so-called "green shoots" and signs of a tentative recovery have sent indexes surging. The S&P/TSX composite is up 58% from a year ago.
The Canadian dollar progressed 0.15 cents to 97.45 cents U.S.
ON BAYSTREET
Of the 14 TSX subgroups, nine were lower on the day, weighed by health-care’s 1.2% slump, a 1.1% drop by global base metals, and a 0.9% slide by the metals and mining group.
The five gainers were led higher by telecoms’ 0.6% jump, while information technology and utilities improved 0.3% each.
The TSX Venture Exchange gave back 3.17 points to 1,558.76, while the Nasdaq Canada index added 1.76 points to 788.05.
ON WALLSTREET
In New York, stocks gave up gains late Tuesday as investors turned cautious amid the latest corporate deal and profit news on the anniversary of the bear market bottom.
The Dow Jones industrial average picked up 11.86 points to 10,564.38. The S&P 500 index moved up 1.95 points to 1,140.45, and the Nasdaq composite ran ahead 8.47 points to 2,340.68
On March 9, 2009, the Dow ended at a 12-year low of 6,547.05, as months of stock weakness in response to the financial market crisis pushed the blue-chip average to its nadir. Since then, the Dow has gained 61.2% through Monday's close, ending at 10,552.52.
In the same time period, the S&P 500 gained 68%, bouncing off of 12-1/2 year lows. The Nasdaq's gain of 84% was off of six-year lows. The gains were fueled by bets on an economic recovery and the impact of trillions of dollars of government stimulus injected into the system.
But the pace of the advance has slowed this year, as investors have gone from pricing in an economic recovery to waiting for evidence that the recovery has legs. A still-abysmal job market and ongoing weakness in housing and consumer spending have dragged on sentiment.
Worries about a European debt crisis and the impact of China slowing its growth have also been in play.
But the ongoing skepticism of the so-called average investor, or retail investor, continues to give the market some support.
With little in the way of economic news until unemployment claims and retail sales come out later this week, markets will once again take their cues from the commodities markets.
Stocks ended little changed Monday after AIG sold its American Life Insurance unit to MetLife in a $15.5-billion U.S. cash-and-stock deal. Typically, such deals would spark a bigger stock market advance, but investors were wary after pushing stocks higher for three of the last four weeks.
Texas Instruments updated its first-quarter profit estimates late Monday, saying it expects to earn between 48 cents and 52 cents U.S. per share on revenue of $3.07 billion to $3.19 billion U.S.
The new forecast was an improvement over the chipmaker's earlier forecast, but investors took a "sell-on-the-news" approach, sending shares 3% lower.
Northrop Grumman dropped out of the competition late Monday to build tanker planes for the U.S. Air Force, leaving Boeing the only bidder in a contract that could be worth as much as $50 billion U.S.
Merck and Sanofi-Aventis said they are combining their animal health care businesses to create one of the biggest in the world. The combined business will have about a 29% market share in a global market worth around $19 billion U.S. Merck shares fell and Sanofi-Aventis shares were little changed.
Treasury prices eked forward, lowering yields for the benchmark 10-year note to 3.69% from Monday’s 3.70%. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.
The price of a barrel of oil dropped 57 cents to $81.30 U.S.
Gold prices jettisoned two dollars at $1,122 U.S.
