The Canadian stock market rallied for the sixth consecutive session, as the diminishing possibilities of aggressive rate hikes in the near term triggered a rally in stocks across sectors. As a result, the S&P/TSX Composite Index inched up 159 points, or 0.8%, on Friday to settle at 20,100, closing above the key psychological level of 20,000 for the first time in four weeks.
While nearly all key stock market sectors, except utilities, witnessed renewed buying in the last session, steep gains in healthcare, consumer cyclicals, and industrial stocks primarily led the market rally. With this, the Canadian market benchmark rallied by 3.1% in the week ended on March 31, marking its best weekly performance since November 2022.
Top TSX Composite movers and active stocks
Shares of BlackBerry (TSX:BB) jumped 14.4% on March 31 to $6.20 per share after its better-than-expected February quarter results came out. During the quarter, the Waterloo-based enterprise software company’s total revenue fell 18.4% year over year to US$151 million, mainly due to continued weakness in its cybersecurity software revenue.
Nonetheless, BlackBerry’s internet of things (IoT) segment revenue kept growing positively, despite macroeconomic challenges, boosting investors’ confidence. This increase helped it report US$0.02 in adjusted earnings for the fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2023 — much narrower than analysts’ expectation of a US$0.04 loss per share. On a year-to-date basis, BB stock now trades with solid 40.6% year-to-date gains.
Osisko Mining, Lightspeed Commerce, Bausch Health, and Canada Goose were also among the top performers on the Toronto Stock Exchange in the last session, as they climbed by more than 5% each.
In contrast, Equinox Gold, Seabridge Gold, Wesdome Gold Mines, and Rogers Communications dived at least 2.9% each, making them the bottom-performing TSX stocks for the day.
Based on their daily trade volume, Yamana Gold, TC Energy, Toronto-Dominion Bank, and Suncor Energy were the most active Canadian stocks.
TSX today
The West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures prices jumped nearly 6% early Monday morning after producers slashed the output forecast significantly. Given that, we could see a buying spree in TSX energy stocks at the open today.
While no key economic releases are due today, Canadian investors may want to remain focused on new developments related to the energy and banking sectors, which could give further direction to stocks.
Market movers on the TSX today
