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Roundup: Canadian stock market dips over miners, industrials slump

Xinhua, February 20, 2015 Adjust font size:

Canada's main stock market logged a small dip Thursday when miners and industrial shares weighed on the trading sentiment.

Toronto Stock Exchange's benchmark S&P/TSX Composite Index edged down 32.42 points or 0.21 percent to 15,180.33 points, with most of the major sectors in losses.

Metals and Mining led the losers by 1.25 percent. Although the bullion prices Thursday gained slight momentum, gold miners lost ground over heavyweights' tumble with the S&P/TSX Global Gold Index down 1.98 percent.

The Vancouver-based gold miner Goldcorp reported a 2.3 billion U.S. dollars loss on its Argentine mine in the fourth quarter of 2013. Its stock price vapored 7.91 percent to 26.65 Canadian dollars (about 21.20 U.S. dollars). And another giant Eldorado Gold also shed 4.28 percent to 6.26 Canadian dollars.

But the world's biggest gold producer Barrick bucked the trend by rising 5.39 percent to 16.03 Canadian dollars per share after this company announced this week that it is to reduce 3 billion U. S. dollars debt to lift profits in 2015.

The industrial sector also tumbled one percent when its leading company, the Montreal-based engineering and construction provider SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. announced Thursday that it will enter not guilty pleas after the Canadian authority declared that the company and two of its divisions have been charged with corruption and fraud. Its share dived 7.05 percent to 40.63 Canadian dollars.

The energy sector retreated 0.40 percent over the declining oil prices, with Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. down 0.42 percent to 38.04 Canadian dollars.

According to Agathe Cote ,the deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, the economy is faced with the steep decline in oil prices.

Other losers included financials, the index's most heavily weighted sector, down 0.01 percent and Utilities down 0.24 percent.

As for the gainers, Info-tech rose 0.36 percent as Constellation Software Inc. added 0.75 percent to 397 Canadian dollars. And Health Care was up 0.21 percent.

On the economic front, Agathe Cote said that "the impact of the oil plunge is already being felt, and the inflation rate fell to 1. 5 per cent in December. The Bank predicts that this rate will continue to decline, bottoming out at a level slightly above zero in the second quarter of 2015."

Meanwhile, Statistics Canada reported Thursday that the number of people receiving regular employment insurance benefits totaled 495,300 in December, little changed from the previous month. Compared with December 2013, the number of beneficiaries decreased by 24,500 or 4.7 percent.

On the currency front, the Canadian dollar closed lower Thursday to 0.8001 U.S. dollar, from 0.8053 U.S. dollar on Wednesday. Endite