FX.co ★ Canadian Market Down Marginally In Lackluster Trade

On Monday, the Canadian market remained fairly stable, likely due to investors awaiting direction from the forthcoming Federal Reserve's monetary policy meeting scheduled on Tuesday and Wednesday. Despite early beliefs of a possible rate cut by the Fed, such optimism dwindled after newly released data revealed a higher-than-expected increase in U.S. consumer and producer price inflation.

Approximately half an hour after noon, the S&P/TSX Composite Index had dropped by 8.81 points to 21,840.34. The Healthcare Capped Index, however, witnessed an increase of over 4% thanks to significant gains made by Tilray Inc, whose stock rose by nearly 15%. Other gains were seen by Bausch Health Companies and Sienna Senior Living, growing by 1.2% and 0.5% respectively.

Nuvei Corporation's stock, conversely, experienced an impressive surge of 31% amid rumours of a potential deal with the private equity firm, Advent International. ATCO Inc also saw a significant surge of 23%, while Franco-Nevada Corporation, Celestica Inc and Dayforce each enjoyed between 2-2.25% increase in their stocks.

Companies such as Stantec Inc, Morguard Corporation, TFI International, and Canadian National Railway also made gains of 1-1.5%. Yet, losses between 1.4-2.5% were sustained by Alimentation Couche-Tard, Kinaxis Inc, Calian Group, Cargojet, Constellation Software, and Docebo Inc.

In particular, Sierra Metals Inc reported a net loss of $13.7 million for Q4 2023, in contrast to a net loss of $26.5 million from the same quarter of the previous year. Meanwhile, Africa Oil Corp made gains of around 2.5% after issuing a cash offer to acquire up to 8.0% of the issued shares in Impact Oil and Gas Ltd from minority shareholders.

On another note, CI Financial Corp, a diversified global asset and wealth management company, declared a 17.1% surge to $465.8 billion in preliminary total assets as at February 2024, up from $397.8 billion in February 2023.

As per the data from Statistics Canada, industrial producer prices in Canada rose by 0.7% in February, following four consecutive months of declines. In contrast, raw materials prices increased by 2.1% month-on-month in February, despite a 4.7% decrease in year-on-year rates.