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Roundup: Canadian stock market rises over medical, industrial rally

Xinhua, June 2, 2015 Adjust font size:

Canada's main stock market in Toronto on Monday turned positive as gains driven by healthcare and industrial shares overpowered the slump in the energy sector.

Toronto Stock Exchange's benchmark Standard & Poor's/TSX Composite Index rose 60.04 points, or 0.4 percent, to 15,074.13 points, with seven of the eight major sectors in the green.

Healthcare led the advance by 1.23 percent when Canada's biggest drug maker Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc. gained 1.23 percent to 300.08 Canadian dollars (about 239.4 U.S. dollars) and another heavyweight Catamaran Corp. edged up 0.6 percent to 74.90 Canadian dollars per share.

The industrial sector strengthened 0.98 percent as the country' s biggest airliner Air Canada soared 3.13 percent to 14.19 Canadian dollars.

Also,the country's biggest automotive supplier Magna International Inc. rallied 3.36 percent to 73.87 Canadian dollars per share.

Metals and mining grew 0.5 percent when gold shares ticked up. The world's biggest gold producer Barrick Gold Corporation was up 0.68 percent to 14.82 Canadian dollars and Goldcorp Inc. added 0. 59 percent to 22.21 Canadian dollars apiece.

Other gainers included TSX's most weighed sector Financials, modestly up 0.16 percent, when Bank of Nova Scotia rose 0.73 percent to 65.88 Canadian dollars.

The only loser in the eight sectors of TSX was Energy, down 0. 35 percent due to the falling oil prices. Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. lost 0.78 percent to 38.08 Canadian dollars.

On the economic front, the outlook for Canadian growth remains in many ways contingent on external developments, particularly the evolution of both crude oil prices and the U.S. economy, according to a report released by Canada's second largest lender TD Bank last week.

And investors are looking for clues from the newly mixed U.S. economic data which may weigh on the Canadian equities market, when U.S. personal spending was flat in April after rising an upwardly revised 0.5 percent in March, while personal income increased 0.4 percent in April after being flat in March, according to a report released by the U.S. Commerce Department Monday.

The U.S. federal agency, however, said Friday that the second estimate of real GDP decreased at an annual rate of 0.7 percent in the first quarter of 2015, in contrast to the initial estimate of a 0.2 percent expansion announced last month.

On the currency front, the Canadian dollar on Monday was down to 0.7978 U.S. dollar, when compared with 0.8041 U.S. dollar last Friday. Endite