TSX ends up 1% at 30,471.68
Eclipses Thursday’s record closing high
Shopify jumps 6.5%; posts record intraday and closing highs
For the week, the index adds 2.4%
Oct 3 – Canada’s main stock index rose to another record high on Friday as shares of e-commerce company Shopify jumped and investors shrugged off downbeat domestic economic data.
Toronto’s S&P/TSX composite index ended up 311.09 points, or 1%, at 30,471.68, its sixth straight day of gains and eclipsing Thursday’s record closing high.
For the week, the index was up 2.4%.
“From a big picture point of view, we seem to be back to a situation where bad news for the economy is good for the markets,” said Elvis Picardo, a portfolio manager at Luft Financial, iA Private Wealth. “On the Canadian side, we had pretty soft data but that was shrugged aside.” Canada’s services economy contracted at a steeper pace in September as businesses shed jobs and outstanding work sank to a five-year low, S&P Global’s Canada services PMI data showed.
A soft economy spurred the Bank of Canada to cut interest rates last month to a three-year low of 2.50%. Money market pricing has leaned toward further easing this month.
The technology sector rose 1.5%. Shopify’s shares were up 6.5%, notching an all-time closing high. They also surpassed the record intraday peak from November 2021.
“Shopify could be benefiting from enthusiasm for anything AI-related,” Picardo said. “We don’t have too many companies with that pedigree in Canada.”
OpenAI has recently introduced a feature that would allow users to make purchases through ChatGPT, in partnership with Shopify and Etsy.
Technology accounts for 11.5% of the TSX’s weighting, far less than the U.S. benchmark S&P 500 where technology represents 50% of the index. Industrials added 1.1% and energy was up 1%. The price of oil settled 0.7% higher at $60.88 a barrel, clawing back some of this week’s decline. Eight OPEC countries are likely to further raise oil output on Sunday.
Nine of 10 major sectors ended higher. The exception was healthcare, which lost 1%.
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