Canadian Market Up On Trade Deal Hopes

(RTTNews) - The Canadian market hit a fresh record high Wednesday morning, and amid selective buying, remains in positive territory around noon, thanks to rising optimism about several nations striking trade deals with the U.S. before the August 1 deadline.

Prospects of trade deals between U.S. and several countries have increased after U.S. President Donald Trump announced trade deals with Japan and the Philippines.

The "largest ever" U.S. trade deal with Japan features a 15 percent tariff on Japanese exports and includes a commitment from Tokyo to invest $550 billion in the United States and open its markets for American vehicles, rice, and other agricultural goods.

Energy, technology and financials stocks are finding fairly good support. A few stocks from utilities, consumer discretionary and healthcare sectors are also up in positive territory with notable gains. Industrials are a bit weak.

The benchmark S&P/TSX Composite Index, which climbed to 27,4672.27, a new high, was up 81.72 points or 0.3% at 27,446.15 at noon.

Terravest Capital is up 2.3%, topping the list of gainers in the Energy Index. Advantage Oil & Gas, Enerflex, Cenovus Energy, Paramount Resources, Athabasca Oil Corp and Suncor Energy are gaining 1.3 to 2%.

Celestica, up nearly 7%, is the top gainer in the technology section. Computer Modelling Group is up 1.85%, while Tecsys, Open Text Corp., BlackBerry and Kinaxis are gaining 1.2 to 1.6%.

Among financials, Brookfield Asset Management is up 2.5% and Brookfield Corporation is up nearly 2%. Manulife Financial, Onex Corp, Igm Financial, Power Corporation of Canada and Trisura Group are up 1.3 to 1.75%.

Capital Power Corp (up 7%), TransAlta Corp (up 2.7%), Bausch Health Companies (up 1.2%), Gildan Activewear (up 1.6%), Linamar Corp (up 1.5%) and Magna International (up 1.4%) are some of the other notable gainers.

Orla Mining and Canadian National Railway are down 4.7% and 4.2%, respectively. Novagold is down 2.3%, while Torex Gold Resources, Iamgold Corp, Centerra Gold, New Gold, Shopify, Wesdome Gold Mines and Lundin Gold are down 1.7 to 2.3%.

In economic news, data from Statistics Canada showed new home prices in Canada fell 0.2% in June, marking the third consecutive monthly decline.