Ericsson, BlackBerry in Focus
Futures for Canada’s main stock index inched lower on Wednesday as oil prices fell on concerns over about the market’s recovery. This, after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies lowered their demand growth forecast.
The TSX was in minus territory 13.66 points to close Tuesday at 18,705.56.
The Canadian dollar nicked up 0.1 cents at 79.33 cents U.S.
June futures lost 0.1% Wednesday.
Ericsson is opening a lab in Ottawa, to work with customers and partners on new 5G radio access networks technologies.
BlackBerry missed Wall Street estimates for fourth-quarter revenue on Tuesday, even as the company said sales of its QNX car software showed improvement.
TD Securities cuts target price on Marathon Gold to $4.00 from $4.25
Scotiabank cut the target price on BlackBerry $7.50 from $8.50
Canaccord Genuity raised the target price on Tamarack Valley Energy to $2.50 from $1.75.
On the economic sheet, Statistics Canada’s industrial product price index In February, the Industrial Product Price Index rose 2.6%, the largest monthly increase in the index in over 40 years, since January 1980’s advance of 3.8%.
The Raw Materials Price Index was up 6.6% month over month in February, the biggest gain since May 2020’s hike of 15.0%.
Real gross domestic product rose 0.7% in January, following 0.1% growth in December.
ON BAYSTREET
The TSX Venture Exchange sank 6.76 points Tuesday to 929.07.
ON WALLSTREET
U.S. stock futures were little changed early Wednesday as investors weighed the potential impact from President Joe Biden’s infrastructure spending plan.
Futures for the Dow Jones Industrials demurred nine points to 32,916.
Futures for the S&P improved 5.5 points or 0.1%, to 3,953.
The NASDAQ Composite index jumped 87 points, or 0.7%, to 12,965.25Tuesday.
Biden will unveil a more than $2-trillion package in infrastructure spending on Wednesday. The plan would raise the corporate tax rate to 28% to fund it, an administration official told reporters Tuesday night.
The White House said the tax hike, combined with measures designed to stop offshoring of profits, would fund the infrastructure plan within 15 years.
Wednesday marks the end of March as well as the end of the quarter. Investors are bracing for volatile trading as pension funds and other big investors rebalance their portfolios.
The Dow is up 6.9% and the S&P 500 has improved 3.9%, month to date, on pace for their fourth positive month in five. For the quarter, the blue-chip Dow has taken on 8%, and the S&P 500 has risen 5.4%, on track for their fourth positive quarter in a row.
The NASDAQ has been the relative underperformer as technology stocks are especially sensitive to rising rates because they depend on borrowing money cheaply to invest in their future growth. For March, the tech-heavy benchmark is down 1.1%, on pace to break a four-month winning streak. For the quarter, it’s up 1.2%.
Private payrolls in March expanded at the fastest pace since September 2020 with companies adding 517,000 workers for the month, according to a report Wednesday from payroll processing firm ADP. It was a healthy spike from the 176,000 in February though just below the 525,000 Dow Jones estimate.
Investors await the key March jobs report on Friday to assess the state of the labor-market recovery. Economists expect 630,000 jobs were added in March, and the unemployment rate fell to 6% from 6.2%, according to Dow Jones.
The stock market is closed for the Good Friday holiday.
Overseas, in Japan, the Nikkei 225 dropped 0.9% Wednesday, while in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng faded 0.7%.
Oil prices were up 21 cents to $60.76 U.S. a barrel.
Gold prices acquired 20 cents to $1,686.70 U.S.
