On Monday, Canada’s commodity-linked main stock index fell from a 22-month high. Metal prices declined, and investors grew cautious ahead of major domestic banks’ earnings reports this week.
After closing at its highest level since April 2022, the Toronto Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX composite index fell 88.84 points, or 0.4%, to 21,324.31.
“There’s not a lot of urgency to buy anything today,” said Greg Taylor, portfolio manager at Purpose. “Everyone’s more just recovering from the big week we had last week with some big moves in technology.”
As bond yields rose, the high-dividend-paying utilities sector lost 2.2%. Meanwhile, the TSX’s most heavily weighted sector, financials, fell 0.7%.
Scheduled to report earnings on Tuesday, Bank of Montreal and Bank of Nova Scotia will kick off Canada’s banking earnings season.
“There’s still some nervousness with the banks… Some of the (analyst) previews were a little more cautious on commercial real estate,” Taylor explained.
As gold and copper prices fell, the materials sector, encompassing precious and base metals miners and fertilizer manufacturers, experienced a 1.2% decline.
Adding 0.7%, technology was a bright spot. Simultaneously, energy saw a 0.5% increase, driven by a 1.4% rise in oil prices to $77.58 per barrel due to potential shipping disruptions.
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