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Roundup: Canadian stock market loses ground following soft inflation data

Xinhua, November 21, 2015 Adjust font size:

Canada's main stock market in Toronto Friday edged lower when the resources and financial shares were weighed after the newly-released official inflation data.

The Toronto Stock Exchange's benchmark Standard & Poor's/ TSX Composite Index was down 40.34 points or 0.3 percent to close at 13,433.49 points.

Resources sectors, including the mining sector and the energy sector which dropped 2.44 percent and 1.85 percent respectively, led the decline after Statistics Canada reported on Friday that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 1.0 percent in the 12 months to October, matching the increase in September.

The federal agency stressed that lower energy prices continued to moderate the year-over-year rise in the CPI, led by the gasoline index, which was down 17.1 percent in the 12 months to October.

Most of the miners and the energy producers dropped steeply as the base metals giant Teck Resources Limited shrank 4.29 percent to 5.80 Canadian dollars (about 4.35 U.S. dollars) while the oil and gas producer Encana Corporation fell 3.91 percent to 10.31 Canadian dollars per share.

Meanwhile, the most influential sector Financials was lower 0.24 percent when the investors were concerned about the momentum of the economic growth.

"October marked yet another month of soft headline inflation, held back by persistently weak energy prices on a year-ago basis", said Brian DePratto, an economist from TD Bank.

Other sectors rallied with Health Care up 2.1 percent.

And investors are seeking new clues for the economic outlook under the context of the negative impact of the falling commodities.

In the Update of Economic and Fiscal Projections, which was released on Friday, Canada Finance Minister Bill Morneau highlighted that private sector economists now expect real gross domestic product (GDP) growth to average 1.9 percent per year over the 2015 to 2019 period, 0.2 percentage points lower than their expectations at the time of the last budget.

On the currency front, the Canadian dollar Friday lowered to 0.7493 U.S. dollar at 4 O'clock (the Canadian Eastern Daylight Time), when compared with 0.7520 U.S. dollar on Thursday. Enditem