Off the wire
• Hong Kong Children's Choir performs in London  • Interview: Sustainable development agenda pursues economic, social progress while highlighting environment protection  • Brazilian President Rousseff's approval rating plummets to new low  • Urgent: Car bombing hits Afghan capital  • UK GDP grew by 0.7 pct in past three months: think tank  • Suspect says he was in Mexico City apartment with killings of five people  • Feature: Blind tour guide who leads guided walks around one of Britain's most stunning buildings  • 1st LD Writethru: U.S. stocks end lower amid data, earnings  • Chinese FM rejects Philippine, Japanese, U.S. claims on South China Sea issue - 3  • Syria clears 250 draft dodgers, armed men  
You are here: 　 Home

Roundup: Canadian stock market drops over healthcare, financials selloff

Xinhua, August 7, 2015 Adjust font size:

Canada's main stock market in Toronto Thursday lost ground after a six-day consecutive rise as sharp sell-offs in health-care and financial sectors hammered down the trading sentiment.

Toronto Stock Exchange's benchmark Standard & Poor's/TSX Composite Index was lower 97.08 points or 0.67 percent to 14,405. 91 points on the closing bell, although the resources shares made solid gains.

Metals and mining logged the biggest increase by 3.24 percent, following the rising gold prices when the most active gold contract for December delivery rose 4.5 U. S. dollars, or 0.41 percent, to settle at 1,090.10 dollars per ounce.

The gold giant Barrick Gold jumped 3.69 percent to 8.99 Canadian dollars (about 6.86 U.S. dollars), while Yamana Gold Inc. advanced 3.06 percent to 2.36 Canadian dollars per share.

The energy sector also rallied 1.63 with Encana up 4.58 percent to 9.37 Canadian dollars.

By contrast, Health Care dived 4.3 percent when investors took profits from a four-day straight gain in this sector. The most influential mover Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc. gave back 5.95 percent to 325.70 Canadian dollars per share.

And another negative mover Financials was down 0.73 percent, after giant banks lost ground with Bank of Nova Scotia plunging 1. 85 percent to 62.63 Canadian dollars.

Other losers included Industrials and Info Tech, down 1.28 percent and 1.12 percent respectively.

On the economic beat, Canada's Department of Finance announced Thursday that the official international reserves increased by an amount equivalent to 586 million U.S. dollars during July to 76, 981 million U.S. dollars.

And the newly data released in this week revealed some positive signal for the economic outlook after Statistics Canada reported Wednesday that the country's exports increased 6.3 percent in June, which is much better than expected.

However, the market is waiting for the U.S. Department of Labor to release the scheduled jobs report on Friday, from which investors may look for clues of the timing of the U.S. central bank's interest rate increase.

On the currency front, the Canadian dollar Thursday was higher to 0.7629 U.S. dollar, when compared with 0.7583 U.S. dollar on Wednesday. Endite