Off the wire
• Chinese envoy calls for tackling root cause of armed conflict to protect children  • Roundup: New UN book highlights impact of climate change on global food security  • Roundup: Nasdaq ends at record high on Yellen's comments  • Roundup: UN member states resolve to address child abduction as tactic of war  • Feature: Italian business world eyes opportunities in China's Hunan  • 1st LD Writethru: Security Council condemns terrorist attacks against mosques in Yemen  • Danish opposition parties lead with 75 pct vote counted  • France to help Albanian institutions fight corruption  • Ghana launches public campaign on safety of Ebola vaccine trial  • Four gov't soldiers killed in Al-Shabaab attack in SW Somalia: official  
You are here: 　 Home

Roundup: Canadian stock market moves higher as gold rally offsets financials weakness

Xinhua, June 19, 2015 Adjust font size:

Canada's main stock market in Toronto on Thursday rebounded modestly as gains driven by gold shares offset the losses from financial stocks.

Toronto Stock Exchange's benchmark Standard & Poor's/TSX Composite Index added 37.66 points, or 0.26 percent, to 14,770.64 points.

Financials, the most heavily weighed sector in TSX, slipped down for a second straight session by 0.14 percent as the trading sentiment was weighed when Greece drifts closer to a default. A meeting of the euro zone's finance ministers held in Luxembourg Thursday was still unable to unlock further international financing. As a result, Greece on June 30 may not manage to repay 1.5 billion euros (about 1.7 billion U.S. dollars) loan installments, bringing the country closer to default.

Banking shares were in the falling stream, with Royal Bank of Canada going down 0.26 percent to 77.85 Canadian dollars (about 63. 67 U.S. dollars) while TD Bank down 0.41 percent to 53.64 Canadian dollars.

Other losers included Energy and Info Tech,down 0.53 percent and 0.63 percent, respectively.

The gold group, subsector of Metals and mining, however, helped push up the TSX index over a higher bullion price. The most active gold contract for August delivery gained 25.2 U.S. dollars, or 2. 14 percent, to settle at 1,202 dollars per ounce on the COMEX division of the New York Mercantile Exchange Thursday.

S&P/TSX Global Gold Index, a leading benchmark of global gold portfolios, advanced 1.2 percent to 158.1 points, after most of the gold companies moved higher. Its heavyweights Barrick Gold rose 1.27 percent to 14.31 Canadian dollars and Goldcorp increased 1.82 percent to 20.73 Canadian dollars.

And Health Care logged the biggest increase of 1.95 percent, when the leading company Concordia Healthcare Corp. soared 5.2 percent to 89.87 Canadian dollars.

Industrials, another positive mover, was up 0.75 percent after Bombardier announced Thursday that it has signed a five-year heavy maintenance agreement with Mesa Air Group, Inc. of Phoenix, the U. S. state of Arizona, which will make Bombardier perform all heavy maintenance tasks for the airline's fleet of CRJ700 and CRJ900 aircraft at its service centers in Macon, Georgia, Bridgeport, West Virginia and Tucson, Arizona.

The biggest railway and aircraft maker in Canada rallied 2.92 percent to 2.47 Canadian dollars in its share price.

On the economic beat, Statistics Canada reported Thursday that there were 521,300 people receiving regular jobless insurance benefits in April, little changed from March.

On the currency front, the Canadian dollar inched higher to 0. 8179 U.S. dollar Thursday, from 0.8173 U.S. dollar Wednesday. Endite