Canadian stock market closes higher to recover some of losses

The Canadian stock market ended with triple-digit gains Tuesday, recovering some of its massive losses in Monday's trading as positive U.S. economic data boosted market sentiment and drove up energy and financial share prices. The S&P/TSX Composite Index climbed 115.04 points, or 0.96 percent, to 12,119.92, while the S&P/TSX Venture Composite Index grew 1.74 points, or 0.18 percent, to 960.00. The U.S. housing starts in March rose 7 percent from February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.04 million, the first time to break the one million mark since June 2008, the U.S. Commerce Department reported Tuesday. As U.S. homebuilders broke ground on more houses in March, investors regarded the gain as an evidence of a continued recovery of the U.S. property market. Oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange was slightly up Tuesday to settle at 88.72 U.S. dollars a barrel, following a drop of more than 2.5 U.S. dollars Monday. All of the eight sectors on the Canadian stock market's main index were up, with energy and financial sectors up by more than 1 percent. The energy sector on the Toronto Stock Exchange increased 1.3 percent, with Suncor Energy, Canada's largest energy company, rose 3.3 percent after a decline of more than 4 percent Monday. The financial sector, a key element of the main index, also climbed 1. 3 percent. Royal Bank of Canada advanced 1 percent to 61.47 Canadian dollars per share. Shares of gold producers remained depressed though bullion prices clawed back some of the losses suffered from a drop of more than 140 U.S. dollars an ounce to a two-year low on the previous day. The two biggest gold companies on the Canadian stock market, Barrick Gold and Goldcorp, both traded lower. Goldcorp shares lost 0.2 percent while Barrick Gold shares fell another 5 percent to a new year-low of 19.24 Canadian dollars apiece. Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry shares rose 1.4 percent to 14.21 Canadian dollars apiece after an analyst from Jefferies investment banking firm said no abnormally high return rates have been seen for BlackBerry's new Z10 touchscreen device so far, which helped boost market confidence on the phone maker to reinvent itself. At closing, the Canadian dollar moved up to 0.9793 U.S. dollars at 5 p.m. local time (2100 GMT) Tuesday, compared with 0.9750 U.S. dollars on Monday.