A Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) logo is seen in Toronto in this file photo.
Canada's main stock index rose on Thursday as higher oil prices supported energy shares, while Manulife Financial Corp. also climbed after meeting a long-held target to achieve an annual profit of $4 -billion in 2016.
The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index was up 33.86 points, or 0.22 per cent, at 15,587.90, shortly after the open. Just four of the index's 10 main groups were higher.
Manulife, Canada's biggest insurer, was up 0.41 per cent to $24.68 in early trading after meeting a long-held target to achieve an annual profit of $4-billion in 2016 while exceeding analyst expectations, helped by a strong performance in Asia.
The performance represents a landmark for Manulife, which initially set a goal in 2012 to achieve annual earnings of $4-billion by 2015 but later pushed back its expectation to 2016, citing tougher economic conditions.
U.S. stocks edged up slightly on Thursday, led by energy stocks, as investors parsed quarterly earnings and economic data for catalysts.
The Dow Jones industrial average was up 26.78 points, or 0.13 per cent, at 20,081.12, the S&P 500 was up 3.11 points, or 0.135531 percent, at 2,297.78 and the Nasdaq composite was up 3.96 points, or 0.07 per cent, at 5,686.41.
Investors hammered Twitter Inc on Thursday after the social network reported its slowest quarterly revenue growth since going public in 2013, struggling to attract advertisers amid intense competition from Snap Inc's Snapchat and Facebook Inc.
The company's shares fell 10.8 per cent to $16.69 in early trading.
Globally, stocks rose and yields fell on some of the euro zone's battered low-rated bonds on Thursday as investors put aside the political risks that have dominated markets this week.
In a difficult start to the year, investors are pondering the impact of a new U.S. president, an unpredictable European electoral calendar and a potential winding-down of the central bank stimulus that has lifted risky assets across the globe.
Rising oil prices and banking stocks pushed shares higher in Europe on a busy day of corporate earnings, while Asian stocks hit their highest in more than 18 months.
"The stabilization of the oil price after its recent wobbles, together with solid earnings, for example, Soc Gen today, is driving the positive sentiment," said Andy Sullivan, portfolio manager with GL Asset Management UK in London.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.5 per cent. French lender Societe Generale reported lower fourth-quarter net income that nonetheless beat analysts' forecasts and its shares added almost 3 per cent.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan gained 0.3 per cent to their highest since July 2015, with Hong Kong, Taiwan and China among the region's best-performing markets.
Japanese shares, however, fell 0.5 per cent, a day before Prime Minister Shinzo Abe meets U.S. President Donald Trump.
French 10-year government bond yields fell below 1 per cent for the first time in two weeks and yields on Spanish and Italian debt fell even more sharply.
Concern over the impact of elections this year in countries including France and Germany saw investors sell bonds of lower-rated euro zone countries earlier this week. However, yields, which move inversely to prices, started falling late on Wednesday and fell further on Thursday.
"We're in an environment where political risk is pretty much at the forefront and we're not going to get any decisive news on that for a number of days," said Orlando Green, European fixed income strategist at Credit Agricole.
"If the market has moved in your direction, you have to ask, will it stay there? There is an element of people closing out of their positions and pausing for thought."
French yields dipped 4 basis points to 0.97 per cent. The premium investors demand to hold French rather than German debt hit its highest in four years on Wednesday, three months before the final round of a presidential election expected to include far-right, anti-euro candidate Marine Le Pen.
A poll on Thursday showed Le Pen winning the first round while two others said would lose the run-off.
Yields on German 10-year bonds, seen as among the world's safest assets, edged down 0.6 bps to 0.30 percent, meaning the French/German yield spread narrowed to 67 bps.
Apart from political risks, bond investors are pondering the impact of the European Central Bank eventually winding down its bond-buying stimulus scheme, which has driven down borrowing costs in the bloc for the past two years.
ECB President Mario Draghi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, bidding for re-election later this year, meet on Thursday. A number of German officials have called on the ECB to unwind its monetary stimulus.
The euro fell 0.2 per cent to $1.0682 after hitting a two-week low of $1.0640. The yen fell 0.4 percent to 112.35 per dollar, having earlier traded as strongly as 111.70. The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies, was fractionally higher on the day.
The dollar fell on Wednesday as U.S. Treasury yields fell to their lowest since mid-January. Investors are re-assessing how many interest rate rises the Federal Reserve will deliver and looking for clarity over whether Trump will make good on his campaign pledges for tax cuts and infrastructure spending.
Ten-year Treasuries yielded 2.36 per cent in European trade on Thursday, up 1.6 bps.
Oil prices rose on Thursday, supported by an unexpected draw in U.S. gasoline inventories, although bloated crude supplies meant that fuel markets remain under pressure.
Benchmark Brent crude was up 50 cents a barrel at $55.62 per barrel. U.S. light crude was 60 cents higher at $52.94 a barrel.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Wednesday gasoline inventories fell by 869,000 barrels last week to 256.2 million barrels, versus analyst expectations for a 1.1 million-barrel gain.
The fall in gasoline stocks suggested U.S. consumption was stronger than expected, and may be healthy enough to support prices at time when most fuel oil markets are very well stocked.
"U.S. gasoline draws are supporting prices today," said Tamas Varga, senior analyst at London brokerage PVM Oil Associates. "They are an indication of stronger U.S. demand."
The EIA report also said that U.S. commercial crude inventories rose by 13.8 million barrels to 508.6 million barrels.
U.S. bank Goldman Sachs said high fuel inventories and rising U.S. crude production meant oil markets would be over-supplied for some time, but that they would drain gradually.
"We do not view the recent excess U.S. builds as derailing our forecast for a gradual draw in inventories, with in fact the rest of the world already showing signs of tightness," the bank said in a note to clients.
"The draws that we expect will start from a high base," the bank said. "U.S. production has also rebounded ... and we view the faster shale rebound as creating downside risk to our 2018 WTI price forecast of $55 per barrel, but not to our expectation that the global oil market will shift into deficit in 1H17."
High oil inventories have been undermining efforts by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other producers including Russia to tighten the market by cutting production.
OPEC and other big exporters have agreed to trim output by almost 1.8 million bpd during the first half of this year in order to prop up prices and rebalance the market.