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Roundup: Canadian stock market closes down to end 2015

Xinhua, January 1, 2016 Adjust font size:

Canada's main stock market in Toronto went down on Thursday amid broad-based losses ahead of the New Year's Day holiday on Friday.

The Toronto Stock Exchange's benchmark Standard & Poor's/ TSX Composite Index fell 132.34 points, or 1.01 percent, to 13,009.95 points. Seven of the TSX index's eight main sectors lost ground.

Among consumer staples, the biggest tumbler, Metro Inc. lost 76 cents, or 1.9 percent, to 39.17 Canadian dollars a share.

In the financial sector, Royal Bank of Canada fell 1.4 percent to 74.54 Canadian dollars a share, while Toronto-Dominion Bank was down 1.2 percent at 54.33 Canadian dollars a share.

Railway stocks also headed lower, including a 2-percent drop in Canadian National Railway to 76.80 Canadian dollars a share.

Air Canada fell 0.5 percent to 10.17 Canadian dollars a share. Turbulence on the airline's flight from Shanghai to Toronto injured 21 passengers on Wednesday, forcing it to land in Calgary.

The materials group fell, including a 2.1 percent drop in Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan Inc to 23.72 Canadian dollars a share.

Energy sector was Thursday's only gainer as oil prices moved up amid rising geopolitical tensions in Middle East.

The resource-linked market is on track to fall 11 percent in 2015, pressured by a steep drop in crude oil prices. For the holiday-shortened week, it has fallen 2.2 percent.

On the last trading day of the year, the market lost about 11 percent compared with a year ago, when the index closed out 2014 at 14,632. That's the worst year for the TSX since 2011.

It peaked at 15,524 on April 15 and has fallen 16 percent since then.

The TSX has been waylaid through much of the year by a Canadian economy that failed to gain any traction, as economic output was either flat or in outright recession for large swathes of the year.

"It's fair to say that 2015 was not a great year for the Canadian economy or its forecasters alike," TD Bank economist Leslie Preston wrote in a research note this week.

By contrast, the Dow is down 2.2 percent on the year, the S&P 500 less than one percent and the Nasdaq gained 5.7 percent, closing at 5,007.

The Toronto stock market will be closed on Friday for New Year's Day.

The Canadian dollar was traded higher at 0.7225 U.S. dollar, compared to Wednesday's closing at 0.7202 U.S. dollar. Endit