Financial stocks help Canadian market close at 18-month high

Canada's main stock market in Toronto moved up on Tuesday as the country's top banks continued to release strong fourth quarter earnings to lift the index to its highest point since June 2015.

The Toronto Stock Exchange's benchmark Standard & Poor's/TSX Composite Index gained 30.63 points, or 0.20 percent, to end the day at 15,125.80 points. Three of the ten subgroups advanced during the session.

Financials group, which accounts for the largest weight in the TSX, was the biggest riser on the day. The group advanced 0.73 percent after Bank of Montreal (BMO) shares jumped 2.77 percent to 92.06 Canadian dollars (69.31 U.S. dollars) after adjusted fourth quarter earnings per share of 2.10 exceeded the 1.85 analysts were anticipating.

During the three month period that ended on Oct. 31, 2016, the country's fourth largest bank posted a net income of 1.345 billion Canadian dollars (about 1.012 billion U.S. dollars), a 10.79 percent increase from the same period a year prior. The biggest growth came from their Capital Markets and U.S. Personal and Commercial Bank divisions, which experienced adjusted growth rates of 63.64 percent and 34.52 percent, respectively.

BMO was the last of Canada' s top-five banks to release fourth quarter results in the past week. Among the other banks, Toronto-based TD Bank was the only one to not beat market expectations.

Among the other groups gaining on Tuesday were Consumer Discretionary (0.54 percent) and Telecommunications (0.02 percent).

Consumer Discretionary, which consists of producers of non-essentials products such as automobiles, apparel and entertainment, rose despite department store retailer Hudson's Bay Company shares plunging 7.02 percent to 13.52 Canadian dollars (10.18 U.S. dollars) after posting three consecutive quarters of losses.

Meanwhile, groups that lost ground on the day were Health Care (0.61 percent), Consumer Staples (0.52 percent), Information Technology (0.49 percent), Materials (0.38 percent), Utilities (0.37 percent), Energy (0.20 percent), and Industrials (0.08 percent).

Energy stocks fell as crude oil slipped for the first time in four trading days after skepticism of last week' s deal to limit supply between Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) members after production levels of OPEC and Russia both rose in November, according to surveys. As a result, the price of Brent delivered in February dipped 58 cents U.S. dollars a barrel to 53.71.

Shares of Calgary-based energy firms Encana Corporation and Suncor Energy Inc. declined 1.36 percent and 0.28 percent, respectively. Part of Suncor's smaller decline was associated with receiving a favourable tax ruling from Canadian Revenue Agency which saved the company from paying a 1.3 billion Canadian dollar (about 979 million U.S. dollar) worth of taxes for accounting of losses from 2007.

On the economic front, Statistics Canada reported earlier in the day that the international trade deficit in October had been cut drastically to 1.13 billion Canadian dollars (about 851 million U.S. dollars) as imports fell 6.3 percent to 44.7 billion Canadian dollars (about 33.7 billion U.S. dollars), the lowest since February 2015.

Trade with China saw increases on both ends, with imports soaring 10.65 percent to 3.304 billion Canadian dollars (about 2.488 billion U.S. dollars) and exports rising 2.76 percent to 1.787 billion Canadian dollars (about 1.345 billion U.S. dollars)

The Canadian dollar inched down 0.004 to 0.7529 U.S. dollars. Endite