By Gavin Adamson
(February 16 – 13:00 ET) – The TSE is up 41.5 to 9356.1 at midday. The oil and gas sub-sector gained another 1.15% today, owing to speculation on low production numbers globally. Penn West Petroleum gained C$1.25 to $34; Crestar Energy, up 80 cents to $20; Anderson Explo.ration up 65 cents to $18.50. The oil and gas sector continues to be buoyed by higher crude prices.
Some of the cyclical Industrials also pushed ahead, leading that sector up by more than 2%. Agra Inc., the manufacturing company, gained C$4.75 to $15.70. On the downside Teleglobe, the datacomm company, dropped more than $7 to $39.60.
CDNX added another 12.78. it’s up to 3376.29. Image Power, a software and hardware developer, put on 22% to C$4.15. Brier Resources also put on 15% to $1.30.
The Dow slipped 36.30 to 10,681.79. Nasdaq pushed ahead 19.72 to 4440.49, mostly on the good fourth quarter report from the semi-conductor company, Appled Materials, which sent that whole sub-sector up. The company added US$7 13/16 to $174 5/16. The S&P slipped by 2.5 to 1399.34.
In business news, TD Waterhouse earned US$57 million in its first financial quarter ended Jan. 31, on revenue of $381.6 million. This compares with a profit of $20.1 million on $152 million in revenue a year earlier. The discount brokerage says 72% of the trading at the firm in the quarter was online trading.