TSX makes small gain, led by bank and industrial stocks

Craig Fehr, a Canadian markets strategist at Edward Jones in St. Louis, says the financials sector is still benefiting from the strong earnings reported last week by most of Canada’s six biggest banks.

Toronto-Dominion Bank, Royal Bank of Canada and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce all reported positive results while the Bank of Montreal disappointed slightly.

“The earnings we got from the banks last week gave a little bit of comfort to the market,” said Fehr, noting recent concerns about Canada’s housing market.

“The banks still have the ability to earn through that environment,” he said. “That provides a little bit of support to the domestic market.”

Bank of Nova Scotia is slated to report Tuesday and National Bank of Canada is scheduled to release earnings on Wednesday.

The Canadian dollar climbed 0.05 of a U.S. cent to an average price of US74.37¢.

With Wall Street closed for Memorial Day, traders will return this week to a full slate of U.S. economic reports including the ISM index for U.S. manufacturing and U.S. private and official payroll numbers.

The reports will be carefully watched to see if employment and hiring is strong enough to continue to bolster the U.S. Federal Reserve’s plan to gradually raise interest rates again.

In electronic trading, the July crude contract was up US19¢ at US$49.99 a barrel and the July natural gas contract was down US10¢ at US$3.21 per mmBTU.

The June gold contract pulled back US$1.60 to US$1,266.50 an ounce and the July copper contract was unchanged at US$2.57 a pound.

With files from The Associated Press