With Wall Street closed for the President’s Day holiday. Bay Street was forced to cope by itself. It did just fine, starting the day in positive territory and ending that way.

At the close of trading, the S&P/TSX composite index was up 53.05 points to 8747.51, a gain of 0.61% as a broad-based rally helped stop a two-day losing streak. Its venture counterpart, the TSX Venture Exchange also finished ahead — up 3.56 points or 0.19% to 1900.54. As expected volumes on both exchanges were low: 152.9 million on the TSX, 77.2 million on the TSXV.

The Canadian dollar was up slightly as well, closing at US76.01¢, up 0.04¢.

In corporate news, Royal Bank of Canada shares gained 49¢ to $64.09 after it announced it had announced a dispute over an Enron-related derivative agreement is ending with a $74-million hit to its bottom line. The bank said it has reached a confidential settlement with Rabobank over the Dutch bank’s refusal to honour a US$517-million swap.

TD Bank stock was also up, 44¢ to $44.96, after Dominion Bond Rating Service Ltd. said it had upgraded its rating trend on the bank to “stable” from “negative.” DBRS said that following the completion of its review, all long-term debt trends for TD are upgraded as a result of positive actions taken by the bank.

Canadian banks will start reporting first-quarter results next week.