Friday, 20 March 2015 02:26
TORONTO: Canada’s main stock index fell on Thursday as investors digested comments from the US Federal Reserve and shares of energy producers dropped with the price of oil.
The US central bank on Wednesday took a step towards raising rates by removing the word “patient” from its policy statement.
But its move to downgrade its economic growth and inflation projections signaled to investors that a rate hike might not happen until later in the year.
The benchmark TSX’s weakness comes after gains in each of the three previous sessions.
“It looks like the market’s expectations have certainly moved to September for the Fed to begin raising rates,” said Chhad Aul, portfolio manager at Sun Life Global Investments.
“The concern now is that the Fed maybe came out more dovish than they would have liked to,” he added. The Toronto Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX composite index was down 50.47 points, or 0.34 percent, at 14,911.77. Six of the 10 main sectors on the index were higher.
Shares of banks and insurers fell.
Toronto Dominion Bank was down 0.7 percent at C$ 53.63, and Sun Life Financial Inc lost 0.9 percent to C$ 39.83.
In the energy sector, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd gave back 1.6 percent to C$ 37.12 and Suncor Energy Inc dropped 1 percent to C$ 35.58.
Copyright Reuters, 2015
