Canada's main stock index goes down over speculation about U.S. Fed's move

Canada's main stock index on Thursday extended the decline to close at 13,114.39 points, dragged by investors' speculation about the U.S. Federal Reserve's possible move to start scaling back its monetary stimulus program as early as next week.

The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index was down 19.03 points, or 0.14 percent, to 13,114.39 points, with most major sectors decreasing.

Positive data showed that U.S. retail sales rose solidly in November. The U.S. Commerce Department said Thursday that the country's retail sales increased 0.7 percent last month, the largest in five months and followed a 0.6 percent rise in October.

Many economic indicators provided more signs of a strengthening recovery in the U.S. economy, which may make the Federal Reserve decide to taper monetary stimulus as early as next week, when the Fed's Open Market Policy Committee will hold a meeting.

The mining sector suffered a loss of 0.25 percent, with Teck Resources Limited, whose main products are steelmaking coal, copper, going down 0.97 percent to 24.43 Canadian dollars (about 22.97 U.S. dollars).

The industrial sector was up 0.55 percent, the highest increase among all the major components of the index, with Canadian National Railway Company up 1.3 percent to 58.4 Canadian dollars.

Canadian biggest aircraft maker Bombardier on Thursday announced it had struck a deal with American Airlines Group for selling the latter 30 aircrafts with a value of 1.42 billion U.S. dollars, plus options for 40 more planes, but its shares were still down 0.44 percent to 4.48 Canadian dollars apiece, as reports said that the American air carrier was ordering an even greater number of regional jets from Embraer, a Brazilian aircraft maker and Bombardier's arch-rival, with orders for buying 60 new E175 planes worth a combined value of about 2.5 billion U.S. dollars.

The financial sector was also down 0.41 percent, with Royal Bank of Canada shrinking 0.48 percent to 68.12 Canadian dollars. And the telecom shares lost 0.77 percent, with Rogers Communications Inc. shares going down 0.41 percent to 48.8 Canadian dollars.

On currency front, the Canadian dollar declined a bit to 0.94 U. S. dollar Thursday, compared with 0.9445 U.S. dollar in Wednesday' s trading.