Stocks in Canada’s biggest centre fell on Friday as mining and energy stocks fell, and with investors cautious over Hurricane Irma, which was headed towards Florida.
The S&P/TSX Composite Index slipped 34.71 points to start Friday at 14,989.82
The Canadian dollar tailed off 0.05 cents to 82.44 cents U.S., after several consecutive upward days.
Hudson’s Bay signaled it had no intention of selling German department store chain Kaufhof, after people familiar with the matter said Austrian real estate company Signa Holding was considering a bid. Moreover, RBC raised the department store chain’s price target to $10.00 from $9.00.
Bay shares gave back 48 cents, or 3.7%, to $12.53.
TransCanada Corp seeks to suspend the application for its Energy East pipeline for 30 days and may abandon the project, the company said on Thursday, weeks after Canada’s National Energy Board announced a tougher review process.
TransCanada shares dipped nine cents to $62.31.
Desjardins raised the target price on Dollarama to $154.00 from $134.00. Dollarama shares gained $3.10, or 2.3%, to $137.82.
Economically speaking, Statistics Canada reported Friday that the economy created 22,000 jobs in August. The unemployment rate declined by 0.1 percentage points to 6.2%, matching the most recent low of October 2008, the month prior to the 2008-2009 labour-market downturn.
ON BAYSTREET
The TSX Venture Exchange dropped 1.14 points to 772.91
Nine of the 12 TSX subgroups were in negative country to start the day, with materials down 1.3%, gold descending 1%, and energy off 0.3%.
The three gainers were health-care, popping 0.9%, consumer discretionary, better by 0.3%, and financials, up 0.2%.
ON WALLSTREET
U.S. stocks opened mixed on Friday as investors grew nervous ahead of Hurricane Irma and as falling rates plagued banking stocks.
The Dow Jones Industrials gained 33.27 points to 21,818.05, with Goldman Sachs and Travelers Companies contributing the most to the gains.
The S&P 500 lost 1.69 points to 2,463.41, with industrials and energy contributing the largest losses.
The NASDAQ sank 16.34 points to 6,381.52, with Apple and Cisco both down.
Shares of major insurance companies were set for weekly losses ahead of Hurricane Irma's landfall in Florida. Both XL Group and RenaissanceRe traded higher, but remained 8.7% and 9.3% lower respectively since Tuesday.
Hurricane Irma was downgraded from a category 5 to a category 4 early on Friday, but the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) warned that the storm will "devastate" parts of the country. The storm lashed the Caribbean with devastating winds and torrential rain, leaving behind 14 deaths and a swathe of catastrophic destruction
Bank stocks also caught a breather after falling throughout the week, as demand for safe haven assets steadily increased while investors grew more doubtful over a hike in interest rates by year's end.
Shares of JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America all traded over 0.5% higher, paring back week-to-date losses as the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury lingered around 2.06%. Wall Street now sees just 31% likelihood for a December rate hike
Meanwhile, shares of Equifax fell 14% after the credit reporting agency revealed a massive data breach that exposed personal information of as many as 143 million consumers. The company also said three executives who sold shares days after the breach was discovered were unaware of the event.
Prices for the benchmark 10-year Treasury note were down, raising yields to 2.07% from Thursday’s 2.05%. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.
Oil prices fell 16 cents to $48.93
Gold prices hiked two dollars to $1,352.30 U.S. an ounce.
