Roundup: Canadian stock market edges up amid miners, medical shares rally

Canada's main stock market in Toronto ticked up Thursday as miners and medical stocks led the way.

The Toronto Stock Exchange's benchmark Standard & Poor's/ TSX Composite Index was up 21.77 points, or 0.16 percent, to close at 13,425.19 points.

Energy, down 0.61 percent, was the only loser in TSX, in line with the falling oil prices. And the heavyweight Suncor Energy Inc. lost 0.49 percent to 36.42 Canadian dollars (about 27.38 U.S. Dollars) per share.

But the index gained support from a rally mostly driven by the sector -- metals and mining, which soared 3.5 percent as most of the basic metals prices on the London Metal Exchange rose sharply on Thursday, with the three-month unofficial copper price up 55.5 U.S. dollars, or 1.21 percent, to 4,627.5 U.S. dollars per tonne.

The Canadian metals giants advanced as the copper miners First Quantum Minerals Ltd. spiked up 6.44 percent to 5.12 Canadian dollars and Lundin Mining Corp. also rallied 3.89 percent to 3.74 Canadian dollars.

Meanwhile, another influential supporter of TSX on Thursday was health care, which rose 1.69 percent as Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., the biggest drug maker in Canada, moved up 2.2 percent to 117.89 Canadian dollars.

And health care as a whole rallied nearly 2 percent since November when traders considered this sector as a defensive strategy in their portfolio because the commodities prices have been facing more pressure due to a likely lift in the U.S. Federal Reserve's interest rate in December.

Further downside in the commodities prices is likely in store in the very near term, when the U.S. dollar is expected to continue its upward trend into early-2016, upon Fed's rate decision, according to a commodity price report released by TD Bank on Thursday.

And the bank also said that the weakness in China's growth has been most acutely felt in the base metals markets, and prices are still vulnerable to any additional disappointing news surrounding economic activity.

Other sectors in TSX were little changed as financials edged higher 0.31 percent and Telecom was up 0.26 percent.

On the domestic economic beat, Statistics Canada reported Thursday that Canadian corporations earned 79 billion Canadian dollars in operating profits in the third quarter, down 5.4 percent from the previous quarter.

The weak profit backdrop is likely to drag down Canada's business investment spending, which may weigh on the economic outlook for at least a couple of quarters more, Leslie Preston, an economist from TD Bank, said in a note on Thursday.

On the currency front, the Canadian dollar Thursday was traded flat against the greenback as the U.S. market closed for Thanksgiving holiday. It was higher to 0.7519 U.S. dollar at 4 o'clock (the Canadian Eastern Daylight Time), when compared with 0.7518 U.S. dollar on Wednesday. Enditem