By Purvi Agarwal
(Reuters) – Canada’s main stock index rose on Wednesday, boosted by gains in technology and financial stocks, as it recovered from the previous session’s broad sell-off triggered by hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation data.
At 10:30 a.m. ET (15:30 GMT), the Toronto Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX composite index was up 196.45 points, or 0.95%, at 20,781.42.
Wall Street futures also opened higher, recovering from a selloff in the previous session after a hot inflation report. [.N]
“We saw a correction in the market yesterday. The merchants keep hoping that inflation will come down. Then that’ll force central bankers to cut interest rates. And when it doesn’t come down, the market gets upset”, said Colin Cieszynski, chief market strategist at SIA Wealth Management.
On TSX, information technology stocks led sectoral advances, up 1.9%, rebounding from their 2.3% loss in the previous session.
IT gains were led by crypto miners Hut 8 and Bitfarms after Bitcoin hit a two-year high and breached $1 trillion in market cap.
Heavy-weight financials also rose 1.5% and were on track for their best day since Dec. 13 last year.
Insurance company Intact Financial and lender goeasy advanced 5.8% and 4.8% to become the top performers amongst financial stocks.
All sectors partially erased losses from the previous session, with the materials sector the only outlier with a 0.3% decline, tracking metal prices lower. [MET/L] [GOL/]
Canada’s largest insurer Manulife Financial and gold miners like Dundee Precious Metals and Kinross Gold among others are set to report their quarterly results after the bell on Wednesday.
Shares of gold miner Centerra Gold jumped 6.4% to the index’s top after the company announced its fourth-quarter results.
(Reporting by Purvi Agarwal in Bengaluru; Editing by Ravi Prakash Kumar)
