The Toronto Stock Exchange gained back some ground on Friday following a sixday skid that had knocked the benchmark index down 6.5%.
The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 115.4 points, or 1.01%, to 11,521.35. There were strong gains in the areas of energy, financials, materials and industrials.
"You can't go six or seven days down without there being some point in time where people step in and say there is some value here now," Blair Falconer, a money manager at HSBC Securities Canada Inc.
in Toronto, told Bloomberg News. "In Canada, the economy is actually quite strong." While gold stocks had a tough go of it Friday, base-metal producers were among some of the hottest individual stocks on the exchange. Teck Resources Ltd. was up 5.6%, to $33.75; HudBay Minerals Ltd. gained 6.4%, to $10.97; and Lundin Mining Corp. was up 6.57%, to $3.73.
For the week, the TSX was down 4.11%.
The TSX Venture composite index was up 31.58 points, or 2.22%, to 1,453.39.
In commodities trading, crude oil was up $2.03, to US$70.04 a barrel, and gold fell $12.50, to US$1,176.10 an ounce.
The Canadian dollar was up 75 basis points, to US94.40¢.
The big economic news out of Canada Friday was that April's annual inflation rate came in at a slightly higher than expected 1.8%. With it still behind the Bank of Canada's 2% target, it left analysts guessing whether the central bank will raise interest rates early next month for the first time in more than a year.
Retail sales in Canada posted their biggest jump in more than five years in March. Sales were up 2.1%. After an upwardly revised 0.8% increase in February, economists were expecting the March numbers to be just slightly better than flat.
Elsewhere, lawmakers in Germany approved that country's share of the US$1- trillion euro-region bailout. Concerns about debt levels in the European Union, and cost-cutting measures that will be needed to contain them, were among the chief causes of last week's market losses.
"The passing of the German rescue package was quite a turning point for the market," Sal Masionis, a stockbroker at Brant Securities in Toronto, told Reuters.
U.S. markets were also up on Friday. The Dow Jones industrial average was ahead by 125.38 points, or 1.25%, to 10,193.39.
The Nasdaq composite index gained 25.03 points, or 1.14%, to 2,229.04.
The main European markets in the United Kingdom, France and Germany saw modest losses, while there was a hefty 2.45% loss on Japan's Nikkei index. Markets in Hong Kong and South Korea were closed for holidays.
