The Toronto stock market looked set for a flat open Thursday with investors likely inclined to do little ahead of a crucial summit of European Union leaders.
The Canadian dollar moved up 0.2 of a cent to 99.18 cents US.
U.S. futures were generally weak with the Dow Jones industrial futures off five points to 12,209, the Nasdaq futures rose 3.8 points to 2,325.2 and the S&P 500 futures dipped 2.7 points to 1,261.3.
Traders are counting on the meeting to produce a fix for the European debt crisis through closer budget controls among the 17 countries that use the euro.
Such an agreement would also likely provide immediate relief from the European Central Bank.
Mario Draghi, the president of the ECB, has said that the bank is ready to do more to support bond markets if governments can agree on tighter spending oversight to ensure another debt crisis doesn’t recur.
Ahead of the summit, the European Central Bank announced it has cut its key interest rate by a quarter percentage point to one per cent.
Draghi has said the eurozone economy could be heading for a mild recession. The cut will promote economic growth and business optimism that policymakers are tackling the crisis.
A slowing economy would only make it harder for European governments to pay down debt.
European bourses were mixed with London’s FTSE 100 was up 0.34%, Frankfurt’s DAX added 0.13% and the Paris CAC 40 dipped 0.24%.
The potential for disagreement at the EU summit weighed on Asian stocks as Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.7%. South Korea’s Kospi lost 0.4% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed 0.7%.
But mainland Chinese shares rose, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index gaining 0.1% and the Shenzhen Composite Index gained 0.1%.
Commodity prices were higher with the January crude contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange ahead 38 cents to US$100.87 a barrel.
March copper on the Nymex was up a penny to US$3.56 a pound while February gold rose $1.20 to US$1,746 an ounce.
On the corporate front, National Bank (TSX:NA) wrapped up a string of earnings reports from the Canadian banks Thursday by posting a profit increase of two per cent to $294 million while revenue increased to $1.19 billion. National also boosted its quarterly dividend by four cents to 75 cents per share.
BCE Inc. (TSX:BCE) said Thursday it was upping its annual dividend by five per cent to $2.17 per share for 2012.
Canadian Oil Sands Ltd. (TSX:COS) announced Thursday it will spend $1.46 billion on its stake in the Syncrude oil project in 2012.
In the U.S., Costco Wholesale Corp. reported that its fiscal first-quarter profit rose 2.6% to $320 million or 73 cents a share, missing estimates by seven cents. Higher costs ate up much of a 12.5% increase in revenue.