The market’s roller-coaster ride resumed Wednesday, as Canadian stocks fell sharply after staging a minor recovery in the previous session. The S&P/TSX Composite Index posted its biggest single-day losses in over two weeks by losing 260 points, or 1.3% of its value, to settle at 20,087.
While stocks across sectors ended the day in red amid continued economic uncertainties, shares of healthcare, metals mining, financials, and consumer companies primarily led the market selloff.
Top TSX Composite movers and active stocks
Shares of Maple Leaf Foods (TSX: MFI) tanked 14% to $23.99 per share after its disappointing fourth-quarter financial results came out. In the December quarter, the Mississauga-headquartered food-processing firm’s total revenue rose 5.8% to $1.2 billion.
However, Maple Leaf Foods posted adjusted quarterly losses of $0.28 per share against analysts’ expectations of $0.14 per share in earnings. The company blamed weaker pork markets and a cybersecurity incident for affecting its bottom line. After yesterday’s sharp selloff, MFI stock is now down 2% on a year-to-date basis.
Similarly, Linamar and Transcontinental also dived by more than 10% each in the last session, as their recently released quarterly results failed to impress investors.
On the positive side, Parex Resources and Nuvei were the top-performing TSX stocks for the day, as they inched up 6.6% each.
Based on their daily trade volume, Teck Resources, Suncor Energy, Barrick Gold, and Canadian Natural Resources were the most active stocks on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
TSX today
Commodity prices were largely bearish early Friday morning, which could keep the main TSX index under pressure at the open today. Besides the domestic employment report, Canadian investors may also want to keep a close eye on the non-farm payrolls and unemployment data from the U.S. market this morning.
Despite the Bank of Canada’s recent decision to pause interest rate hikes, continued macroeconomic uncertainties and weak corporate earnings are still keeping investors on their toes. These are some of the key reasons why the main TSX benchmark has seen 2.4% value erosion this week so far and is expected to remain volatile in the near term.
Market movers on the TSX today
