{"id":71286,"date":"2016-02-25T21:22:24","date_gmt":"2016-02-26T02:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=71286"},"modified":"2016-02-25T21:22:24","modified_gmt":"2016-02-26T02:22:24","slug":"canadian-dollar-surges-toronto-stock-exchange-ends-day-relatively-flat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2016\/02\/25\/canadian-dollar-surges-toronto-stock-exchange-ends-day-relatively-flat\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian dollar surges, Toronto Stock Exchange ends day relatively flat"},"content":{"rendered":"

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TORONTO\u2014The Canadian dollar surged Thursday, gaining more than three quarters of a cent in a possible sign that investors may be questioning whether the currency has been undervalued this winter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re seeing a general bounce-off of those January lows,\u201d said Gareth Watson, vice-president of investment management and research at Richardson GMP Ltd. \u201cMaybe it’s just some recognition in the market that the Canadian dollar got oversold.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Thursday, the loonie soared by 0.79 of a cent to settle at 73.85 cents US. At its lowest point this year\u2014Jan. 19\u2014it traded at 68.69 cents US.<\/p>\n

Watson said that an almost five-cent swing since then shows that the currency is doing \u201cextremely well\u201d against a greenback that is weakening.<\/p>\n

In the short term, he expects the Canadian dollar to continue to trade in the 70- to 75-cent US range, but wouldn’t be surprised if it lands below that if commodity prices erode even further or there’s a major hike with interest rates from the central banks.<\/p>\n

Last month, Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz held off on lowering its trend-setting interest rate of 0.5 per cent as a way to help the struggling economy.<\/p>\n

Poloz said the decision was made after the bank factored in the federal government’s pledge to pump tens of billions of dollars into infrastructure projects over the coming years.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, on the stock markets, investors seemed to shy away from broad moves as the Toronto Stock Exchange ended the day relatively flat.<\/p>\n

The S&P\/TSX composite index added 13.33 points at 12,753.60 as rising financial stocks balanced out lower metal stocks.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou’re not seeing a heck of a lot of movement … nothing guiding this market higher or lower,\u201d said Watson.<\/p>\n

Two Canadian banks reported their latest earnings on Thursday, stating that they both experienced first-quarter earnings growth despite declines in the oil industry and a slowing economy.<\/p>\n

TD Bank (TSX:TD) reported net income of $2.22 billion, up roughly eight per cent from a year ago when it reported $2.06 billion in quarterly profits, while CIBC (TSX:CM) saw its quarterly profit climb six per cent to $982 million, from $923 million previously.<\/p>\n

The news was enough to make the financial sector the highest gainer on the TSX, up 0.67 per cent.<\/p>\n

Wall Street was firmly in positive territory with the Dow Jones industrial average was ahead 212.30 points at 16,697.29.<\/p>\n

The broader S&P 500 composite index climbed 21.90 points at 1,951.70 and the Nasdaq composite index jumped 39.60 points to 4,582.21.<\/p>\n

On the commodities front, the April contract for crude oil slipped 92 cents at US$33.07 per barrel.<\/p>\n

The April gold contract lost 30 cents to US$1,238.80 a troy ounce and April natural gas was down five cents at US$1.79 per mmBtu.<\/p>\n

May copper dipped three cents to US$2.07 a pound.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TORONTO\u2014The Canadian dollar surged Thursday, gaining more than three quarters of a cent in a possible sign that investors may …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":19255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,43],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-71286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","category-stock-markets","tag-original","mauthors-linda-nguyen","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}