Equities in Canada’s largest centre opened higher on Thursday, helped by financial and energy shares.
The S&P/TSX Composite Index improved 82.92 points to open Thursday at 15,252.86
The Canadian dollar gained 0.07 cents at 77.44 cents U.S.
Markets throughout North America will be closed tomorrow for Good Friday
Dollarama reported an 11.4% rise in quarterly profit on Thursday, driven by an increase in comparable sales as shoppers spent more at its stores.
Dollarama shares rocketed $7.50, or 4.8%, to $162.75.
South Africa's Gold Fields will buy a near 50% share of Asanko Gold Inc's Ghana subsidiary and take a stake in the Canadian miner in a $202.6 million deal announced on Thursday.
Asanko leaped 19 cents, or 20.4%, to $1.12.
RBC cut the target price on AGF Management to $7.50 from $8.00. The AGF Tiger growled nine cents higher, or 1.4%, to $6.44.
In the economic docket, Statistics Canada reported that gross domestic product edged down 0.1% in January, offsetting part of the 0.2% growth in December. The decline was mainly the result of lower output of non-conventional oil extraction and decreased activity in real estate.
The agency also declared that its industrial product price index edged up 0.1% in February. Widespread price increases in the major commodity groups of the IPPI were largely offset by lower energy and petroleum product prices
StatsCan’s raw materials price index fell 0.3% due to lower prices for crude energy products.
ON BAYSTREET
The TSX Venture Exchange gained 4.55 points to 788.77
All but two of the 12 TSX subgroups were positive, with consumer staples charging up 1.5%, consumer discretionary stocks better by 1.4%, and materials 0.9% to the good.
The lone laggards were information technology, down 0.8%, and health-care leaning lower 0.4%.
ON WALLSTREET
U.S. stocks traded higher on Thursday, the last trading day of the month and the quarter, as the technology sector tried to curb steep declines seen in recent sessions.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average strengthened 119.01 points to 23,967.43, with Intel and Cisco as the best-performing stocks in the index.
The S&P 500 recovered 11.76 points to 2,616.76, with tech rising 1%.
The NASDAQ Composite index gained 21.23 points to 6,970.46.
Shares of Facebook rose more than 1%, while Apple, Netflix and Alphabet also traded higher.
However, the S&P 500 technology sector was down 6% entering Thursday's session following a slew of negative news for some of the key companies in the space. Last week, reports emerged alleging that Cambridge Analytica, an analytics company, had gathered data from 50 million Facebook profiles without users' permission.
Meanwhile, shares of Amazon tumbled Wednesday after news emerged that President Donald Trump reportedly wanted to take on the e-commerce giant, in regards to its tax treatment.
Trump then tweeted on Thursday morning: "Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!"
Prices for the benchmark 10-year Treasury note were lower, raising yields to 2.76% from Wednesday’s 2.78%. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.
Oil prices were unchanged at $64.38 U.S. a barrel.
Gold prices dropped $2.40 to $1,327.60 U.S. an ounce.
