Canada’s main stock index and U.S. markets ended down for the week despite strong jobs reports on both sides of the border on mounting concerns that a run of good corporate earnings may end.
The fast pace of the rise in U.S. government bond yields is pressuring the most expensive stocks signalling that prices matter once again, says Cavan Yie, a portfolio manager at Manulife Asset Management.
“While we are seeing ongoing healthy macroeconomic indicators, there’s pressure on the stocks because of lofty valuations, coupled with potentially weaker than expected margin profiles,” he said in an interview.
The jobs reports issued Friday showed good topline numbers. Canada’s job market gained 63,000 positions in September, pushing the unemployment rate lower to 5.9%. And the U.S. unemployment rate fell in September to 3.7%, the lowest since 1969.
Yet investors are troubled by rising U.S. wages that could spark inflationary pressure.
Average hourly pay in September rose 2.8% from a year earlier. And Amazon this week raised its minimum wage to US$15 an hour.
That “will put pressure on all retailers to push up their wages to remain competitive. So all of this is inflationary which is driving the higher long-term yields,” Yie added.
He expects equity markets could remain volatile if wages continue to rise and the Federal Reserve remains hawkish.
The S&P/TSX composite index closed down 60.50 points to 15,946.17, after hitting a low of 15,895.50 on 208.2 million shares traded.
All but three subindices traded lower, led by energy, base metals and information technology. Canadian energy stocks haven’t been helped by the run-up in the price of oil because of the ongoing pipeline construction problems that is contributing to a wider-than-usual discount being paid for Western Canadian Select crude compared with New York-benchmark West Texas Intermediate oil.
Health care, industrials and utilities closed higher.
Canada’s two large railways primarily drove the industrials sector, in part, because they are more insulated to wage pressures, said Yie.
“Companies like that are able to pass through a lot of commodity price increases as well as operating cost increases and these are the business that we like, those that are able to pass through so ones that have pricing power.”
In New York, the decline was steeper. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 180.43 points to 26,447.05. The S&P 500 index was down 16.04 points to 2,885.57, while the Nasdaq composite was off 91.06 points at 7,788.45.
The Canadian dollar traded at an average of US77.30¢, down from an average of US77.52¢ on Thursday but up US5¢ on the week.
The November crude contract was up US1¢ at US$74.34 per barrel and the November natural gas contract was down US2.2¢ at US$3.14 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was up US$4 at US$1,205.60 an ounce and the December copper contract was down 1.45¢ at US$2.76 a pound.