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Roundup: Canadian stock market plunges over uncertainty about U.S. Fed's rate hike decision

Xinhua, September 15, 2015 Adjust font size:

Canada's main stock market in Toronto on Monday dropped heavily as resources led the fall ahead of the U.S. Federal Reserve's monetary policy meeting.

The Toronto Stock Exchange's benchmark Standard & Poor's/TSX Composite Index vapored 108.13 points, or 0.8 percent, to 13,353.34 points on the closing bell, with losers seen across all the eight major sectors.

And resources shares suffered the most, with the mining sector tumbling 3.75 percent and the energy sector shrinking 1.43 percent.

Most of the leading companies sharply declined when the copper giant First Quantum Minerals Ltd. nosedived 8.13 percent to 7.12 Canadian dollars (about 5.37 U.S. dollars) a share, and Canada's biggest oil and gas company Suncor Energy shrank 1.44 percent to 33.59 Canadian dollars a share.

The trading sentiment was weighed ahead of the Fed's two-day policy meeting starting Wednesday, when investors were in speculation about the U.S. central bank's decision whether or not to lift its benchmark interest rates, which has led to turbulence in the global market during the recent months.

Meanwhile, as a market heavily dependent on energy and mining, TSX was also dragged down by the falling stocks in China in the overnight trading.

China's economy is becoming more consumer-based and services-oriented as the engine for development is changing, Tuuli McCully, an economist from Scotiabank, said in a report Monday.

Other losers included Industrials, which dropped 1.14 percent as Bombardier Inc. vapored 10.75 percent to 1.66 Canadian dollars a share when the biggest Canadian aircraft and railway maker failed to resume the rising streak since last week.

On the economic beat, Canada's finance department said Monday that the federal government posted a budgetary surplus of 1.9 billion Canadian dollars for the fiscal year that ended on March 31, 2015, and Canada continues to have the lowest total government net debt-to-GDP ratio among the Group of Seven (G-7) countries.

On the currency front, the Canadian dollar on Monday inched lower to 0.7543 U.S. dollar, when compared with 0.7545 U.S. dollar Friday. Enditem