Canadian stocks turned slightly negative on Thursday, as investors booked profits following a four-day-long winning streak that added 2.8% to the S&P/TSX Composite Index’s value. After reaching its highest level since August 10, the main TSX benchmark slipped by 38 points, or 0.2%, yesterday to settle at 20,293.
Even as healthcare and technology stocks posted solid gains during the session, weakness in other main sectors like utilities, real estate, and consumer noncyclicals pressured the Canadian market index.
With this, the TSX Composite ended August with 1.6% losses following a 5.4% rally in the previous two months, taking its year-to-date gains to 4.7%.
Top TSX Composite movers and active stocks
Parkland, Ero Copper, Dundee Precious Metals, and Endeavour Silver were the worst-performing TSX stocks yesterday, plunging by more than 4% each.
On the positive side, Tilray Brands (TSX:TLRY) was the top-performing TSX Composite component for the second consecutive day, as it inched up by 10.9% on August 31 to $3.98 per share, extending its week-to-date gains to more than 25%.
This week’s steep rally in TLRY stock started on Wednesday after news reports about top health officials in the United States pushing to ease restrictions on marijuana came out. Besides Tilray, this news has helped other marijuana stocks on the Toronto Stock Exchange, like Cronos Group and Aurora Cannabis, advance this week.
Shares of Shopify (TSX:SHOP) climbed by more than 10% yesterday to $89.89 per share. This rally in SHOP stock came a day after announcing that merchants on its platform, using Amazon’s fulfillment network, will soon be able to add “buy with Prime” on Shopify’s checkout and process the order by Shopify payments. Year to date, Shopify’s share prices are now up 91.2%.
Based on their daily trade volume, Suncor Energy, Manulife Financial, Canadian Imperial Bank Commerce, and Enbridge were the most active stocks on the exchange.
TSX today
After surging by more than 6% in the previous six sessions, West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures prices were extending their rally early Friday morning, which could help TSX energy stocks gain at the open today.
Besides domestic monthly and quarterly gross domestic product growth numbers, Canadian investors may want to closely monitor the important manufacturing and labour market data from the United States this morning, which could give further direction to TSX stocks.
On the corporate events side, Canadian Western Bank will announce its latest quarterly results on September 1. Bay Street analysts expect it to report quarterly earnings of $0.83 per share with $277.7 million in revenue.
Market movers on the TSX today
