By Ketki Saxena
Investing.com -- At 1:45 p.m in Toronto, the S&P/TSX composite Index was at 18,988.62 points, down 0.60% in the day’s trading.
Canada’s main stock index fell on Tuesday, weighed down by tech as Shopify (TSX:SHOP) announced a 10% workforce layoff, and tracking U.S. Equities lower on profit warnings for Walmart (NYSE:WMT). The moves from both Shopify and Walmart are indicative of slowing retail growth and consumer spending as the economy cools.
North American equities are also being weighed by risk-off sentiment ahead of a 75 bps interest rate hike expected tomorrow from the Federal Reserve, and earnings reports due this week from tech heavyweights Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Meta, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN).
The Canadian index was also weighed by crude, which reversed the morning’s gains to trade as the U.S. announced the release of an additional 20 million barrels of oil from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve to cool prices in the context of tightening Russian and limited OPEC output.
Further losses on the TSX were limited by gains in heavyweight materials, one of the few TSX subindices in the green today, as investors bought the dip in mining stocks ahead of earnings from major Canadian resource companies this week.
The biggest gainers on the TSX so far today included Oceana Gold (+4.55%), Osisko Gold Royalties (+3.39%), Spartan Delta Corp (+2.89%), Wesdome Gold (TSX:WDO) (+2.95%) and Osisko Mining (TSX:OSK) (+3.36%).
Today’s biggest losers included Shopify (-14.50%), Celestica Inc (-8.55%), Lightspeed Commerce (TSX:LSPD) (-5.96%), Nuvei (TSX:NVEI) (-5.80%), and Aritzia (-5.80%).