Canadian stock market edges down

Canada's main stock market here failed to follow the rising streak on Thursday as resources shares held back the rally in the previous trading day.

After see-sawing in the midday trading, the Toronto Stock Exchange's benchmark Standard & Poor's/TSX Composite Index lowered 65.07 points, or 0.49 percent, to 13,241.89 points on the closing bell, Xinhua news agency reported.

The index was dragged down as the gains driven by non-resources stocks were overpowered by the slump in resources shares, with the mining sector going down 1.44 percent, and the energy sector lower 0.85 percent.

Most of the energy and miners giants lost ground once again after a one-day rally which was mainly boosted by the positive gross domestic product (GDP) data from Statistics Canada on Wednesday.

Suncor Energy Inc. declined 1.23 percent to 35.25 Canadian dollars (about $26.59) while Teck Resources Ltd. shed 4.4 percent to 6.09 Canadian dollars.

By contrast, Health Care gained 3.51 percent when Concordia Healthcare Corp. extended gains by 5.02 percent to close at 59.8 Canadian dollars per share, following a big rise of 17.94 percent Wednesday when the Ontario-based medical company announced that it has completed its under-written public offering of 8,000,000 common shares of Concordia for aggregate gross proceeds of $520 mn.

Under the pressure of the turbulence of the commodities prices, investors were in the uncertainty about the turnabout of the falling oil prices which led to great volatility for the Canadian equities market.

ATB Financial, the largest Alberta-based financial institution, said in its latest quarterly Alberta Economic Outlook Thursday that Alberta's economy will contract by less than 1 percent in 2015, returning gradually to growth by mid-to-late 2016, because the falling oil prices shattered the country's oil industry.

On the currency front, the Canadian dollar on Thursday rallied 0.7 percent to be traded at $0.7544 at 4 O'clock (the Canadian Eastern Time), when compared with $0.7493 on Wednesday.