By Ketki Saxena
Investing.com - In Toronto, the S&P/TSX Composite Index closed the day at 22,074 points, or 0.30% higher to hit a new all-time high.
Gains on Canada’s benchmark index were driven primarily by the financial sector (+0.59%) towards which the Index is heavily weighted, near equal to the Index's Commodities lean. Banks profited from Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s hawkish comments yesterday regarding aggressive interest rates this year. Financials are amongst the main beneficiaries of interest rates, which allows them to widen interest income margins.
Canadian real estate (+1.20%), health care (+2.81%), Tech (+2.77%), consumer discretionary (+0.95%), and Industrials (+0.56%) also closed in the green today, offsetting losses in energy (-0.83%).
WTI and Brent traded on a mixed note today after the EU remains divided about an embargo on Russian oil. However, losses in crude remained curtailed as ongoing supply concerns related to Russia remain unabated. Losses in the energy sector were also limited by today’s surge in natural gas, with U.S. gas futures at $5.15, up 5.10% today. U.S LNG futures soared after a forecast of cool weather next week, and continued demand from the EU as it seeks to replace Russian energy.
Along with Energy, Global Mining, the benchmark for metals and mining, was one of the only sectors in the red at closing today, down 1.02% in the day’s trading as metals, including gold and silver fell as bond yields rose.
Today’s TSX Market Movers
In Individual stocks, the biggest gainers of the session on the S&P/TSX Composite were Lightspeed Commerce Inc (TSX:LSPD), which rose 7.90% or 2.92 points to trade at 39.86 at the close. Trisura Group Ltd (TSX:TSU) added 6.66% or 2.13 points to end at 34.11 and Lithium Americas Corp (TSX:LAC) was up 6.43% or 2.45 points to 40.55 in late trade.
Biggest losers included K92 Mining Inc (TSX:KNT), which lost 5.21% or 0.45 points to trade at 8.18 in late trade. Dundee Precious Metals Inc (TSX:DPM) declined 3.88% or 0.31 points to end at 7.69 and Teck Resources Ltd B (TSX:TECKb) shed 3.67% or 1.87 points to 49.09.
In New York
The S&P500 was up 1.19%, the Dow Jones was 0.74% higher, and the Nasdaq was up 1.95%.
Gains were driven by Megacaps including Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:FB) Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) (NASDAQ:AMZN) Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) (NASDAQ:MSFT), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) (NASDAQ:AAPL). Tech stocks largely appeared to shrug off the Fed’s hawkish comments, and continued to regain losses after last week’s sell-off.
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) jumped after the official opening of its Gigafactory in Berlin, Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) surged after announcing the expansion of its share buyback program, and Nike (NYSE:NKE) rose after beating analyst expectations for quarterly results.