TORONTO — Canadian and U.S. markets slumped on the last day of October, with Canadian markets buoyed somewhat by energy stocks even as the price of oil fell.
The S&P/TSX composite index was down 45.05 points at 19,426.14.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 128.85 points at 32,732.95. The S&P 500 index was down 29.08 points at 3,871.98,while the Nasdaq composite was down 114.31 points at 10,988.15.
After a volatile month, markets were flatter on the last day of October, said Lesley Marks, chief investment officer at Mackenzie Investments.
“People want to make sure we hold on to the great gains that we’ve experienced this month,” she said.
Investors are cautious ahead of an expected three-quarters of a percentage point rate hike by the Federal Reserve this week, Marks said, while the Bank of England is also expected to raise rates this week.
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The TSX energy index was up 1.62 per cent, while battery metals were down 1.59 per cent, information technology 1.23 per cent, and base metals almost one per cent.
Other indexes were down or up only slightly, while health care was up more than four per cent, pulled up by another strong day for Canopy Growth Corp.
The Canadian dollar traded for 73.27 cents UScompared with 73.45 cents US on Friday.
The December crude contract was down $1.37 at US$86.53 per barrel and the December natural gas contract was up 67 cents at US$6.36 per mmBTU.
The price of oil is down on U.S. oil output gains,said Marks: “Obviously more supply is negative for oil prices.
However, the price of natural gas is up, noted Marks, likely driving the energy sector’s rise Monday.
Both Canadian and U.S. labour force data will help shed light on whether the economy is slowing at the central banks’ intended pace, said Marks.
“Bad news will be good news,” she said.
“We still have what appears to be a shortage of workers in Canada and the United States … so what we need to see is a little bit more employment slack being built up in our economies in order to bring some of that wage pressure down and offset the upward pressure that’s contributing to the stickier inflation.”
Canada is just getting into the swing of earnings season, but Marks said she will be looking for indications of companies’ 2023 outlooks more than their third-quarter data.
With rate hikes rising rapidly this year, backward-looking data like earnings don’t tell the full story, she said.
“We really need to focus more on leading indicators,” she said, such as labour data, which indicates the supply and demand balance for labour and upward wage pressures.
The December gold contract was down US$4.10 at US$1,640.70 an ounceand the December copper contract was down 5.4 cents at US$3.38 a pound.
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