Markets were sliding at midday Monday as commodity prices fell and as investors shifted their focus outside the eurozone, though problems there continued to weigh on sentiment as well.
At midday in Toronto the benchmark S&P/TSX composite index was down by about 120 points, or 0.96 per cent, to 12,400, despite a report Monday morning showing the country’s economy growing 0.3 per cent in August from the previous month and by 2.4 per cent year-over-year, and others showing that industrial product prices and raw material prices both beat expectations.
CMC Markets analyst Colin Cieszynski pointed to two market movers on Monday: continuing struggles to reform Italy’s finances and the Bank of Japan’s intervention to “knock down” the yen.
As well, Cieszynski noted that the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development cut its growth forecast for this year and next for both Europe and the U.S., “and suggested that the eurozone in particular could struggle, echoing the sentiment of the Bank of Canada who suggested last week that Europe could undergo a short recession.”
The price of crude oil slipped 90 cents to $94.42 US a barrel in electronic trading in New York at midday, and gold was down $23.40 to 1,723.80 US an ounce.
The Canadian dollar was down 21 basis points to $1.0061 US.
In the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average was down about 132 points, or 1.08 per cent, to 12,099, and the Nasdaq composite index was down 25 points, or 0.90 per cent, to 2,713.
Markets overseas also fell on Monday. In Tokyo, the Nikkei slipped 0.69 per cent and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong edged downward by 0.77 per cent. The losses were bigger in Europe where London’s FTSE dropped 1.64 per cent, the CAC in Paris fell 2.38 per cent and Frankfurt’s DAX declined by 2.64 per cent.
