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Falling precious metals prices and mixed corporate earnings drove the Canadian stock market down for the third consecutive session on Thursday, even though investors continued to react positively to the Bank of Canada’s latest decision to slash policy interest rate. After declining by as much as 176 points in intraday trading, the S&P/TSX Composite Index staged a recovery later to end the volatile session with a 32-point drop at 22,608.
On the one hand, metal mining and industrial stocks fell sharply yesterday. On the other hand, strong gains in other key sectors, including real estate, healthcare, and technology, limited the TSX benchmark’s losses.
Top TSX Composite movers and active stocks
Boyd Group Services, StorageVault Canada, Pan American Silver, Bombardier, and Fortuna Mining were the worst-performing TSX stocks for the day, diving by at least 4.9% each.
In contrast, Mullen Group (TSX:MTL) rallied by 9.3% to $14.50 per share, making it the session’s top-performing TSX stock. These gains in MTL stock came after the Okotoks-headquartered logistics firm announced its upbeat second-quarter financial results. In the quarter ended in June, Mullen’s revenue rose slightly by 0.3% year over year to $495.6 million, supported by new acquisitions and its focus on margin over market share.
Although negative foreign exchange movements and higher finance costs drove its adjusted quarterly earnings down by 5.1% from a year ago to $0.37 per share, they still exceeded Street analysts’ expectations of $0.29 per share. After the recent rally, MTL stock is now up 3.3% on a year-to-date basis and offers a 5.4% annualized dividend yield.
Seabridge Gold, West Fraser Timber, FirstService, and CES Energy were also among the top performers on the Toronto Stock Exchange yesterday, climbing by at least 5% each.
According to the exchange’s daily trade volume data, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank, Bank of Montreal, Veren, and TD Bank were the five most active stocks.
TSX today
Commodity prices across the board were mixed early Friday morning, pointing to a flat opening for the resource-heavy main TSX index today.
On the economic data front, in addition to Canada’s monthly budget balance figures, Canadian investors will also closely monitor the important personal consumption expenditure data from the United States this morning, which could give further direction to stocks.
Market movers on the TSX today
