Canada’s main stock index fell broadly on Tuesday, taking cues from world markets, after the International Monetary Fund cut its forecasts for global economic growth, blaming tariff war.
The IMF cut its global economic growth forecasts for 2018 and 2019, saying the U.S-China trade war was taking a toll and emerging markets were struggling with tighter liquidity and capital outflows.
At 11:57 a.m. ET, the Toronto Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX composite index was down 57.26 points, or 0.36 per cent, at 15,887.42.
Eight of the 11 major sectors were lower, led by a 1.6-per-cent decline in informational technology stocks and 0.9-per-cent dip in materials.
Marijuana producers drove a 2-per-cent increase in health care stocks. Canopy Growth Corp. and Aurora Cannabis Inc. both rose 3.8 per cent, while Aphria Inc. increased 3.7 per cent.
Energy stocks were down 0.1 per cent with Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. slipping 1.5 per cent. Suncor Energy Inc. jumped 0.8 per cent.
The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq rose on Tuesday, boosted by a rebound in technology stocks, but gains, including on the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average, were kept in check by concerns on slowing global growth.
The heavyweight technology sector rose 0.36 per cent, with gains in Microsoft and other software companies more than offsetting a drop in chipmakers, who count Chinese companies among their main clients.
The communication services group gained 0.26 per cent, with Facebook’s 1.8-per-cent gain helping offset a roughly 1-per-cent drop in Alphabet.
Alphabet continued its losses from Monday when it said it would shut down its social network Google+ and tighten its data sharing policies after finding that private profile data of at least 500,000 users may have been exposed to hundreds of external developers.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 20.80 points, or 0.08 per cent, at 26,465.98, the S&P 500 was up 2.78 points, or 0.10 per cent, at 2,887.21 and the Nasdaq Composite was up 30.08 points, or 0.39 per cent, at 7,766.03.
Oil prices edged higher on Tuesday on growing evidence of falling Iranian crude exports before the imposition of new U.S. sanctions, as well as a partial production shutdown in the Gulf of Mexico because of Hurricane Michael.
Brent crude rose 65 cents to $84.56 a barrel. The global benchmark hit a four-year high of $86.74 last week but slipped as low as $82.66 on Monday.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures gained 36 cents to $74.65 a barrel.
Iran’s crude exports fell further in the first week of October, according to tanker data and an industry source, as buyers sought alternatives ahead of U.S. sanctions that take effect on Nov. 4.
Iran, OPEC’s third-largest producer, exported 1.1 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude in that seven-day period, Refinitiv Eikon data showed. An industry source who also tracks exports said October shipments so far were below 1 million bpd.
That is down from at least 2.5 million bpd in April, before President Donald Trump in May withdrew the United States from a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and re-imposed sanctions. The figure also marks a further fall from 1.6 million bpd in September.
“This rapidly declining availability of Iranian barrels within the anticipatory phase of the oil sanctions could prove to be a powerful bullish force but also one that can quickly subside once these sanctions are fully realized next month,” Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates, said in a note.
Reuters