By Jeff Sanford
(June 16 – 17:30 ET) – Most market indexes ended the week on a down note. The TSE 300 composite Index finished the day at 10035.70. That’s 74.86 points off the record it set yesterday.
Much of the downward pressure came from bank stocks. Five of the big six traded lower today. The Bank of Montreal lost $1.80 to close at $61.70. Royal Bank was down $2.25 closing at $74.25. Toronto Dominion Bank lost $1.10 dropping to $35.75
Within the sub-indexes, Financial Services and Industrial Products were the biggest decliners, shedding 141.16 and 142.54 respectively. Eight of the sub-indexes, though, finished up.
Trading volume was light at 121,097,176, not surprising for a warm, seasonal Friday. Declining issues edged out advancing issues, 554 to 546, while 254 issues remained unchanged.
In individual stocks, Renaissance Energy Ltd., was the only big story throughout a pretty quiet day. It’s rose 11% over the day to finish $1.65 higher at $16.55. No news was reported to explain the big move. Though, recent stories have been running in the U.S. media about Wall Street interest in energy and gas stocks. Renaissance would definitely catch their attention. It reported doubling its cash flow, as well as record earnings for the first quarter of 2000.
Ranger Oil and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. both finished down slightly as traders continued to work the news that Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. is engineering a hostile takeover of Ranger.
The CDNX ended the day up after dropping below its opening tally. It closed up 10.58 points to finish the day at 3472.15
South of the border, the Dow Jones industrial average took a bit of a dive, to end the day at 10,449.30, down 265.52 points.
After dropping, earlier in the day, the NASDAQ composite index rallied to end up 14 points at 3860.52.
The Canadian dollar finished up slightly, ending the day at US68.16¢.