A man checks his mobile phone as he walks at the financial district of Pudong in Shanghai March 5, 2014.ALY SONG/Reuters
The Toronto stock market was higher in early trading Thursday despite lower expectations for Chinese economic growth and major news from the oilpatch.
The S&P/TSX composite index gained 54.43 points to 15,137.27. The Canadian dollar was down 0.31 of a U.S. cent to 80.23 cents.
New York indexes were little changed with traders set to digest the U.S. government's employment report for February on Friday. Economists generally expected the American economy to have created about 235,000 jobs last month.
The Dow Jones industrials gained 30.79 points to 18,127.69, the Nasdaq rose 16.29 points at 4,983.43 and the S&P 500 index added 2.84 points to 2,101.37.
China has announced a growth target for this year of about seven per cent, down from last year's 7.5 per cent. Actual economic growth last year was 7.4 per cent, the lowest since 1990.
In corporate news, Encana fell three per cent after it announced that it is tapping the markets with a share issue of $1.25-billion. The collapse in oil prices – down 50 per cent from the highs of last summer – has had a major impact on the cash flows of energy companies.
U.S. stocks gained, after equities posted their biggest two-day slump in more than a month, amid corporate deals and further details of the European Central Bank's bond-buying program.
Pharmacyclics Inc. surged 10 per cent after AbbVie Inc. agreed to buy the drugmaker in a $21-billion deal. AbbVie fell 4.8 per cent. Mallinckrodt Plc climbed 5.4 per cent after buying closely-held Ikaria Inc. for about $2.3-billion.
"Obviously the whole notion of European style QE has been well advertised at this juncture," Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist in Philadelphia at Janney Capital Management LLC, which oversees about $68-billion in assets, said by phone. "More encouraging is the the fact that they've raised their view of economic growth over the next several years. There's been more upbeat news coming out of Europe."
ECB President Mario Draghi primed investors to be ready for the central bank's first bond-buying salvo as he signaled officials are convinced the measure will succeed in the choking off the threat of deflation.
Six years after the U.S. Federal Reserve began its own quantitative easing program, the ECB's Governing Council committed to begin asset purchases next week that will amount to €60-billion ($66-billion U.S.) a month, its president told reporters in Nicosia. He also unveiled forecasts showing higher economic growth with an inflation outlook that puts the ECB on track to reach its inflation goal of just below 2 per cent.
The S&P 500 dropped 0.9 per cent in the past two days for the biggest slide in five weeks after rising to fresh records four times in February. The Dow fell 1.1 per cent, and the Nasdaq Composite Index lost 0.8 per cent after surpassing 5,000 on Monday.
The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rose 7,000 last week to 320,000, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 52 economists surveyed by Bloomberg projected 295,000 jobless claims.
Investors will also gauge factory orders for clues on the health of the U.S. recovery. Data on nonfarm payrolls and unemployment are due on Friday.
With files from Bloomberg News