Canada’s main stock index opened higher on Thursday, lifted by gains in financial stocks, a day after the Bank of Canada hiked interest rates for the second time this year.
The Toronto Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX Composite index was up 69.74 points, or 0.42 per cent, at 16,487.06.
Hydro One stock fell 5.2 per cent after its board and CEO resigned under pressure from the newly elected provincial Conservative government.
Eight of the TSX’s 11 sectors were higher. Tech stocks gained 1.3 per cent. Urthecast gained 4.3 per cent, Shopify was up 2.1 per cent and BlackBerry added 1.3 per cent.
Health care added 0.9 per cent. Canopy Growth was up 2.3 per cent and Knight Therapeutics rose 1.4 per cent.
Financial stocks rose 0.4 per cent as Intact Financial added 1.1 per cent, Sun Life gained 0.6 per cent and Bank of Montreal was up 0.6 per cent.
U.S. stocks opened higher on Thursday, recovering from a selloff a day earlier as higher oil prices and merger activity helped offset fears of a Sino-U.S. trade war.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 102.45 points, or 0.41 per cent, at the open to 24,802.90. The S&P 500 opened higher by 9.12 points, or 0.33 per cent, at 2,783.14. The Nasdaq Composite gained 36.10 points, or 0.47 per cent, to 7,752.71 at the opening bell.
Broadcom fell 17.5 per centafter the chipmaker’s US$18.9-billion deal to buy business software maker CA Inc. caught investors and analysts by surprise. CA’s shares jumped 18.1 per cent.
Comcast, up 0.8 per cent, made a US$34 billion bid for Sky, trumping an offer from 21st Century Fox . Shares of Rupert Murdoch’s company slid 0.2 per cent.
Markets were rattled on Wednesday after the United States threatened to impose tariffs on an additional US$200-billion worth of Chinese goods. China said Thursday the two countries have not been in touch about restarting negotiations and while it does not want a trade war, it would fight if necessary.
“While markets have typically reacted negatively to any escalation on trade, the overall impact has been relatively modest under the circumstances, which suggests investors are far from panic mode right now,” Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at online forex broker Oanda, said in a note.
“There still seems to be some hope that common sense will prevail and a full-blown trade war will be averted.”
Wednesday’s drop though was not as steep as in late March and early April when the S&P 500 tumbled more than 2 per cent on four occasions as trade rhetoric escalated.
Boeing and Caterpillar, among the Dow’s biggest drags on Wednesday and the hardest hit by the recent trade dispute, were up about 1 percent.
Also helping sentiment was crude oil prices recouping some ground following sharp losses in the previous session.
Delta Air Lines slid 1.1 per cent after the company’s quarterly profit fell less than expected. Delta though slashed its full-year earnings forecast as fuel costs surged.
Overall, S&P 500 companies are expected to post second-quarter profit growth of around 21 per cent, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
The earnings season kicks off in earnest on Friday, when big Wall Street banks JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup report results. Shares of all three banks were up about 0.7 percent.
Weekly jobless claims hit a two-month low last week, according to a Labor Department report, in a sign that labor market conditions remained robust in early July.
While consumer prices barely rose in June, the underlying trend continued to point to a steady buildup of inflation pressure that could keep the Federal Reserve on a path of gradual interest rate increases.
With files from Reuters