Toronto stocks finished slightly lower Friday, ending five-session winning streak. The S&P/TSX composite index fell 10.02 points, or 0.09%, to 11,245.37.
Trading volume was light ahead of the Christmas holidays at 217 million shares.
For the week, the key index rose 0.9%.
The TSX will re-open on December 28.
The materials group rose 0.35%, while the telecoms sector advanced 0.8%.
Those gains were offset by a 0.59% slide in the energy sector.
Energy stocks ignored a modest gain in oil prices following disruptions to Nigerian exports, opting instead to hand back a small portion of the massive gains they have accumulated this year.
Shares of EnCana Corp. fell 54¢, or 1%, to $53.09, while Imperial Oil slipped $1.93, or 1.6%, to $116.07.
Among individual shares, Dofasco Inc. rose 81¢, or 1%, to $64.71, on news of a sweetened hostile takeover bid for the steelmaker from Arcelor SA.
Arcelor raised its offer to $4.9 billion, tops a $4.8 billion friendly bid from ThyssenKrupp AG.
The junior S&P/TSX Venture composite index rose 26.46 points, or 1.22%, to 2,190.56.
The Canadian dollar rebounded from early weakness to finish with slight gains versus the U.S. currency.
The loonie finished at US85.76¢, up from US85.69¢, at Thursday’s close.
In New York, U.S. stock prices closed at almost flat levels, after a light-volume pre-Christmas session.
The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 6.17 points at 10,883.27.
The S&P 500 ended up 0.54 point at 1,268.66 and the Nasdaq Composite up 2.93 points at 2,249.42.
For the week, the Dow Jones Industrials and the S&P 500 both gained 0.1%, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.1%.