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Roundup: Canadian stock market slides over falling resources

Xinhua, August 12, 2015 Adjust font size:

Canada's main stock market in Toronto Tuesday edged down as resources shares suffered a sharp downturn following a big rally Monday, when a sudden depreciation of Chinese currency, Renminbi, weighed on the global capital market.

Toronto Stock Exchange's benchmark Standard & Poor's/TSX Composite Index lowered 51.72 points, or 0.36 percent, to 14,414. 67 points.

Seven of the eight most weighted sectors in TSX were in the negative territory except for Utilities, which was up 0.69 percent.

The mining sector led the fall by 4.9 percent when the basic metals prices on the London Metal Exchange (LME) lost ground Tuesday, after RMB, or the yuan, fell sharply in value following a decision of the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, to improve its "central parity system" to better reflect market development in the exchange rate between the Chinese yuan against the U.S. dollar.

The basic metals giants First Quantum Minerals Ltd. plunged 7. 75 percent to 9.76 Canadian dollars (about 7.45 U.S. dollars) a share while Teck Resources Ltd. tumbled 6.93 percent to 9.4 Canadian dollars per share.

Energy moved lower 0.81 percent over the falling oil prices as the oil supply of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries hit a three-year high in July, reaching 31.51 million barrels a day, according to a report of the bloc released Tuesday.

The oil and gas company Encana Corp. declined 2.46 percent to 9. 50 Canadian dollars per share, and the Canadian Oil Sands Ltd. lost 1.92 percent to 7.15 Canadian dollars a share.

Modest losses were also seen in other sectors including Financials.

The real estate stocks as a whole eked out a slight gain after Canada's housing starts fell by 4.6 percent to 193,000 annualized units in July 2015, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Canada's housing authority.

"Overall, the combination of low interest rates and strong demand should provide a strong incentive to developers to continue supplying the housing market with new stock," Brian DePratto, an economist from TD Bank said in a report Tuesday.

On the currency front, the Canadian dollar on Tuesday was traded modestly lower to 0.7631 U.S. dollar, when compared with 0. 7692 U.S. dollar Monday. Endite