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Jennifer Dowty

Jennifer Dowty, Chartered Financial Analyst, writes exclusively for Globe Unlimited subscribers. The Before the Bell report is updated throughout the premarket to reflect latest developments.

Good Friday morning to you.  It's been an active and volatile week in the markets, with uncertainty about Greece's future weighing heavily on equity markets. However, today is expected to be a quiet day on the Toronto Stock Exchange ahead of Sunday's Greek bailout referendum, especially because U.S. equity markets are closed ahead of the July 4 Independence Day.

TSX futures are down slightly as it will likely be a neutral to slightly negative day, with buyers shying away from stepping into the market ahead of the referendum. This week, the S&P/TSX composite index has declined just over 1 per cent. The health-care sector bucked the downtrend and was up this week, with shares of Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Prometic Life Sciences climbing higher. The health-care sector has been the top performing sector in the S&P/TSX composite index year-to-date, led by strength in shares of Concordia Healthcare and Valeant Pharmaceuticals.

There was more M&A activity in the sector today, with health insurer Aetna Inc. making a deal to buy competitor Humana Inc. in a $37 billion deal the companies say would create the second-largest managed care company.

So far, 2015 is shaping up to be a year of no momentum in North American equity markets. The S&P/TSX composite index is relatively flat. South of the border, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 Index are also relatively unchanged year-to-date. The first half of this year has truly been a stock picker's market, with only selective stocks and sectors outperforming. I suspect this stock pickers market will continue into the second half of 2015. Stocks that deliver solid growth and positive outlooks stand to attract investors and deliver the highest returns. Second-quarter earnings season in Canada will begin to unfold in the latter half of this month.

Major European markets have been trading slightly lower today, generally down less than half a percent. Markets worldwide are hostage to what is happening in Greece with investors taking a "wait and see" approach. Polls show that Greek citizens are nearly equally divided with a slight bias to the "yes" vote for accepting the bailout proposals.

Overseas, the Japanese Nikkei was relatively flat. However, more instability gripped Chinese markets, with the Shanghai Stock Exchange composite index plummeting 5.8 per cent and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange composite index declining 5.3 per cent. Volatility is likely to persist in the near-term in Chinese markets with speculative retail investors creating wild swings in the equity markets. After Chinese markets closed today, the country cut the number of initial public offerings planned this month by two-thirds, adding to frantic efforts to shore up plunging stock prices. China's Financial Futures Exchange also said today it will monitor the accounts of its top 50 clients and introduce transaction fees on the three index futures products to curb speculative trading.

Now, here's a closer look at the market numbers and what else is going on this morning.

MARKET DATA:

Equities
Hong Kong's Hang Seng -0.83 per cent
Shanghai composite index -5.77 per cent
Japan's Nikkei +0.09 per cent
London's FTSE 100 -0.40 per cent
Germany's DAX +0.01 per cent
France's CAC 40 -0.40 per cent
Stoxx 600 -0.12 per cent

Commodities
WTI crude oil (Nymex Aug) -0.69 per cent at $56.54 (U.S.) a barrel
Gold (Comex Aug) +0.28 per cent at $1,166.80 (U.S.) an ounce
Copper (Comex Sep) +0.13 per cent at $2.63 (U.S.) a pound

Currencies
Canadian dollar at 79.61 (U.S.), -0.0013
U.S. dollar index -0.106 at 96.007

Bonds
U.S. 10-year Treasury yield 2.38 per cent, -0.04

ECONOMIC INDICATORS:

No reports scheduled.

STOCKS TO WATCH:

Health insurer Aetna Inc. has made a deal to buy competitor Humana Inc. in a $37 billion deal the companies say would create the second-largest managed care company. Adding Humana's large business in Medicare Advantage, the federal health care program for seniors, would make Humana the nation's largest Medicare Advantage provider. The purchase price includes a combination of cash and stock worth about $230 per share.

Bombardier Transportation has signed two contracts with Transport for London worth US$558 million to build and maintain another 45 four-car electric multiple train units.

Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp said on Thursday it has postponed a shareholder vote on its planned $2-billion (Canadian) takeover by Alfa SAB de CV and Harbour Energy Ltd at the request of the bidding companies. The vote, originally set for next week in Vancouver, has been pushed back to July 28.

Crescent Point Energy Corp. announced that it has entered into an arrangement agreement to acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of Coral Hill Energy Ltd.

Coral Hill is a privately owned, light oil-weighted producer with approximately 3,200 boe/d of high-netback productive capacity, primarily in the Swan Hills Beaverhill Lake resource play.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

"Life more often teaches us how to perfect our weaknesses than how to develop our strengths." - Elizabeth Bibesco

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