Canada’s main stock market moved lower Thursday but stayed near its record level as gold, metals and materials stocks incurred losses.
The S&P/TSX composite index in Toronto retreated 28.32 points at 15,615.52, a day after it finished just a few points shy of its all-time closing high set in September 2014.
The telecom sector was the biggest gainer on the index, helped by a spike from Rogers Communications which reported better-than-expected quarterly results.
The Toronto-based company reported that it earned an adjusted profit of $382 million or 74¢ per diluted share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of $331 million or 64¢ per diluted share in the same quarter the previous year.
The results surpassed analysts’ expectations of a profit of 71¢ per share of earnings, excluding items such as asset impairments, according to Thomson Reuters. Revenue was slightly below the consensus estimate of $3.56 billion.
Shares in Rogers gained more than 6%, up $3.46 to $56.04, on the Toronto stock market.
Peggy Bowie, a senior equity trader at Manulife Asset Management, says corporate earnings season is underway and it’s reassuring to investors that results by and large are supporting the recent gains seen in stock markets.
“There is a lot of earnings coming out to actually support what has happened,” she said.
U.S. President Donald Trump has also been credited with helping fuel the optimism in Toronto and New York over the last few months because investors interpret his administration’s policies on taxes, regulation and trade will benefit business.
“We have a lot of change and shifting going on in the market and it’s definitely being underpinned by hope,” said Bowie.
“But we’re early in the year. It’s only January so everything can change in a heartbeat with the way things go as long as we get intermittent (Trump) tweets out that will provide us with volatility.”
It has been a record-breaking week on Wall Street with the Dow Jones surpassing the 20,000 mark for the first time, while the S&P 500 index and Nasdaq composite closed at all-time highs on Tuesday and Wednesday.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average gained 32.40 points at 20,100.91 to set another record, while the other major U.S. indexes were barely changed. The S&P 500 slipped 1.69 points at 2,296.68 and the Nasdaq composite fell 1.16 points to 5,655.18.
The Canadian dollar was at US76.35¢, down 0.18 of a U.S. cent despite higher oil prices.
In commodities, the March crude contract gained $1.03 at US$53.78 per barrel and March natural gas climbed US5¢ at US$3.40 per mmBTU.
The February gold contract fell US$8 to US$1,189.80 an ounce and March copper contracts lost US4¢ at US$2.67 a pound.