Canadian Market Ends Lower For 2nd Straight Session

(RTTNews) - Despite recovering from early lows, the Canadian market closed notably lower on Monday, hurt by losses in materials, technology and consumer sectors.

Several stocks from healthcare, real estate and industrials sectors too ended on a weak note.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's tariff threats, interest rate uncertainty and persisting concerns about geopolitical tensions weighed on sentiment.

Data from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business showed that the CFIB's Business Barometer in Canada, which reflects 12-month forward expectations for business performances in the country, fell to 56.4 in December from the upwardly revised 59.8 in the previous month, which was the highest since mid-2022.

The benchmark S&P/TSX Composite Index ended down 175.81 points or 0.71% at 24,620.59, well off the day's low of 24,491.51.

The Materials Capped Index drifted down 1.78%. MAG Silver Corp (MAG.TO), Seabridge Gold (SEA.TO), Pan American Silver Corp (PAAS.TO), Equinox Gold Corp (EQX.TO), Ssr Mining (SSRM.TO), B2Gold Corp (BTO.TO), Hudbay Minerals (HBM.TO), Ivanhoe Mines (IVN.TO) and Eldorado Gold (ELD.TO) lost 2.3 to 4%.

Technology stocks Coveo Solutions (CVO.TO), Dye & Durham (DND.TO), Lightspeed Commerce (LSPD.TO), BlackBerry (BB.TO), Tecsys Inc (TCS.TO), Shopify Inc (SHOP.TO), Docebo Inc (DCBO.TO), Celestica Inc (CLS.TO), Constellation Software (CSU.TO) and Kinaxis Inc (KXS.TO) lost 1.2 to 3.4%.

Consumer discretionary stocks Gildan Activewear (GIL.TO), Mty Food Group (MTY.TO), Restaurant Brands International (QSR.TO) and Magna International (MG.TO) closed notably lower.

Consumer staples stock Maple Leaf Foods (MFI.TO) closed down by about 2.2%. George Weston (WN.TO), Alimentation Couche-Tard (ATD.TO) and Loblaw (L.TO) ended lower by 1 to 1.5%.

Energy stocks found good support. Birchcliff Energy (BIR.TO) and Advantage Oil & Gas (AAV.TO) climbed 5.6% and 5.3%, respectively. Tourmaline Oil Corp (TOU.TO), Arc Resources (ARX.TO), Topaz Energy (TPZ.TO), Peyto Exploration (PEY.TO), Precision Drilling Corp (PD.TO) and Nuvista Energy (NV.TO) gained 2 to 4.5%.