Canadian stocks climbed up for a second consecutive session on Thursday as the Bank of Canada’s latest decision to cut interest rates by 25 basis points drove 10-year treasury bond yields to their lowest level in 2024, boosting investors’ confidence. The S&P/TSX Composite Index rose 84 points, or 0.4%, yesterday to settle at 22,229.
Despite a minor downside correction in some sectors like real estate and consumer cyclical, which saw a strong rally in the previous session, solid gains in commodity-linked stocks helped the TSX benchmark rise further.
Top TSX Composite movers and active stocks
Shares of Transcontinental (TSX:TCL.A) popped by around 9% to $14.53 per share, making it the top-performing TSX stock for the day. This rally in its share prices came a day after the Montréal-headquartered packaging company announced its upbeat quarterly financial results. In the quarter ended in April 2024, its total revenue fell 8.6% year over year to $638.2 million as the volume in its two main operating sectors declined.
Nevertheless, effective cost reduction initiatives and strong profitability from the packaging sector drove Transcontinental’s adjusted quarterly earnings up by 15.6% from a year ago to $0.52 per share, beating Street analysts’ expectations of $0.44 per share by a healthy margin. After the recent rally, Transcontinental stock is now up 6% on a year-to-date basis and offers an attractive annualized dividend yield of nearly 6.7%.
SSR Mining, Filo, and Torex Gold Resources were also among the top performers on the Toronto Stock Exchange as they surged by more than 5% each.
On the flip side, Celestica and Canada Goose were the session’s worst-performing TSX stocks, slipping by at least 3.7% each.
Based on their daily trade volume, Suncor Energy, Manulife Financial, Baytex Energy, Cenovus Energy, and Enbridge were the most active stocks on the exchange.
TSX today
After staging a strong recovery in the last couple of sessions, commodity prices across the board were mixed, pointing to a flat open for the resource-heavy main TSX index today.
Besides the latest domestic employment change and unemployment rate numbers, Canadian investors may also want to keep a close eye on the important labour market data from the United States this morning, which could give further direction to stocks.