5:03pm ET
Another view: "The quality of the companies isn't the issue, it's the valuation that gets put on them," says Ian Filderman at Scotiabank wealth management.
"There are some very good companies that happen to be in trust form right now. And I'm actually quite impressed at how well the market seems to be taking this — I don't sense any panic, what I really sense is a very orderly review of: 'What does this all mean and how does this impact on the strategy in my holdings?'"
4:33pm ET
Some of the fallout from the income trust bombshell:
Yellow Pages trust closed down 17 per cent.
CI Financial fund plunged 18 per cent.
Aeroplan trust was down 10 per cent.
Telus was down 13 per cent.
BCE lost 11 per cent. (Both BCE and Telus, which planned to convert to income trusts, say they're weighing their options.)
Extendicare Inc. fell 9 per cent after the big retirement-home operator pulled back on its plan to become a trust.
In the energy trust sector, the Canadian Oil Sands trust closed down 11.5 per cent, the Canetic Resources trust lost 15 per cent and Precision Drilling was down 13 per cent.
4:28pm ET
The S&P/TSX income trust index down is 12 per cent — an evaporation of more than $20-billion in market value for investors.
"I'm put out, not to put too fine a point on it," declared Brendan Caldwell, president of brokerage firm Caldwell Securities Ltd.
"I tell you, I've got seniors that have income trusts that are down $25,000 or $30,000 today.... They're getting hit in a big way."
4:13pm ET
The Canadian dollar closed 0.82 of a cent lower at 88.22 cents US on Wednesday. The U.S. dollar stood at C$1.1335, up 1.04 cents.
4:01pm ET
The TSX closed down 324.32 points to 12,020.27, a decline of 2.6 per cent.
3:05pm ET
"This is unwarranted panic selling that is occurring," says U.S. investment newsletter writer Bryan Perry.
2:52pm ET
Record daily volumes on the TSX, with more than an hour to go until the close: 490,501 senior and 17,912 venture trades on a flow of 7.6 million messages.
2:25pm ET
The TSX remains underwater, down more than 300 points as the Conservative decision to tax income trusts continues to reverberate through the markets.
Leading the index down are CI Financial , off 18.97 per cent at $24.35; BFI Canada down 18.94 per cent at 24.65; Yellow Pages down 18.06 per cent at 12.39; Newalta Income Fund down 17.92 per cent at 27.16; and Energy Savings Income Fund down 17.78 per cent at 13.83.
1:00pm ET
The TSX resumed its slide with some defensive selling coinciding with traders heading out for their lunch break. Hit hardest were energy and mining stocks, as the rally in gold stalled and oil prices sputter following the weekly inventory data out of the U.S.
The S&P/TSX composite was down 333 points at 12,011.72, its lowest level in almost two months.
The energy subindex, which makes up almost 30 per cent of the composite and which contains many of the country's biggest income trusts, was down more than 5 per cent, accounting for 56 per cent of the composite's overall decline.
Telecoms, driven down by selling of trust-conversion candidates BCE and Telus, were off almost 9 per cent, accounting for 20 per cent of the overall index decline.
Lost in the shuffle were some decent earnings reports. BCE, Canadian Natural Resources, Cameco and Enbridge all beat analysts' estimates. Yet BCE is off 11 per cent, Canadian Natural 4.6 per cent and Cameco 3.1 per cent; only Enbridge has scratched out a small gain.
11:59am ET
