Toronto's main stock index was set for a lower open on Wednesday, hurt by a slide in commodity prices after Italy paid a euro-era record high yield on its new five-year bonds, fuelling euro-zone debt worries.
Among Canadian issues to watch soon after this hour’s opening bell, fertilizer giant Agrium Inc., which plans to spend about $1.5 billion to increase its potash production capacity by 50%, as it looks to gain from continued strength in crop prices.
The Canadian dollar traded at 96.65 U.S. cents.
Global stocks slid lower after both the U.S. Federal Reserve and China signalled that they had no intention of riding to the rescue of the global economy.
U.S. stock futures dipped into the red. Dow futures were down 26 points, while S&P 500 futures edged 0.8 points lower, and Nasdaq futures dipped 0.3%, within an hout of the New York Stock Exchange opening for business.
The Federal Reserve warned on Tuesday Europe’s sovereign debt crisis could hurt the U.S. economy but failed to signal that it would take fresh action to stimulate growth.
Britain's FTSE 100 slid 0.8%, France's CAC 40 fell 1.5% and Germany's DAX lost 0.9%.
The euro hit an 11-month low of $1.3005 U.S. as investors also speculated that more euro zone nations may be hit with debt downgrades in the near term.
Investors were edgy after Italy was forced to pay an average yield of 6.47% to get investors to lend it three billion euros ($3.95 billion) over five years. The yield was up 0.17 percentage points from the last time Italy looked to raise money over five years and reflected the highest rate since 1997.
Japan's Nikkei fell 0.4%, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 0.5%
On Wednesday, China ended its annual policy-setting conference with a series of commitments to deliver economic stability in the face of an "extremely grim" outlook for the global economy in 2012. It indicated that it would only fine-tune economic policies, rather than swing into an outright monetary-easing mode to shore up growth, which disappointed investors.
Gold fell $30.20, trading at $1,632.90 U.S. an ounce.
Crude oil lost $1.51, falling to $98.65 U.S. a barrel.
