TORONTO – The Toronto stock market headed for a slightly lower open Monday as commodity prices slipped after a strong runup last week.
Investors also took in a possible multi-billion-dollar deal in the resource sector. The Sunday Telegraph reported that Viterra Inc., Canada’s largest publicly traded grain handler, has received an offer from Swiss commodities firm Glencore PLC worth C$5.5 billion. Glencore declined to provide any comment on the reports to The Canadian Press on Monday morning.
Viterra’s shares surged 24 per cent Friday after Viterra said it had received expressions of interest.
The Canadian dollar was down 0.12 of a cent to 100.8 cents US.
U.S. futures were little changed with the Dow Jones industrial futures off nine points to 12,854, the Nasdaq futures dipped three points to 2,640.75 and the S&P 500 futures were down 1.4 points to 1,365.4.
Commodity prices were lower Monday after positive economic news from China and the U.S. helped push prices for oil and metals higher. Lower inflation raised hopes that the Chinese government will embark on further measures to stimulate the economy while traders also welcomed data showing the U.S. economy created more than 200,000 jobs for a third month in a row during February.
But during the weekend, China reported its biggest monthly trade deficit in at least a decade in February as imports rebounded after a Lunar New Year holiday slowdown in January. But the combined figures for both months showed growth in imports and exports decelerating markedly.
The April crude contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange was down $1.07 to US$106.33 a barrel.
Copper dipped three cents to US$3.83 a pound while bullion was off $12.20 to US$1,699.30 an ounce.
Traders looked forward to more data this week to show that the U.S. economy continues on a steady but slow recovery.
The U.S. Federal Reserve makes its next scheduled announcement on interest rates on Tuesday. The central bank will keep rates near zero and likely not embark on any further measures to stimulate the economy.
Traders also looked to the release of U.S. February retail sales Tuesday with economists looking for a gain of 1.2 per cent. American industrial production numbers are out on Friday and the consensus called for a 0.5 per cent improvement over the previous month.
In Canada, investors hope that Statistics Canada will report a 1.2 per cent in manufacturing sales for January on Friday.
Traders also looked ahead to a meeting of European finance ministers that is expected to pave the way for a second massive bailout for Greece that will prevent the debt-ridden country’s imminent bankruptcy.
After last week’s broadly successful bond swap with its private creditors, Greece will hope that it has met the conditions its partners in the eurozone attached before they finally approve the country’s €130 billion financial rescue.
Relief over the bond swap was tempered by news that Greece’s debt reduction deal with private creditors could cause losses for banks after the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, the private organization that rules on such cases, ruled that a “restructuring credit event” occurred.
That means Greece’s debt relief will trigger payouts of so-called credit default swaps, a type of insurance on bonds. But the ISDA said overall payouts will be significantly below the US$3.2 billion in net outstanding credit default swap contracts linked to Greece.
European markets were mixed as London’s FTSE 100 index dipped 0.12 per cent.
Frankfurt’s DAX added 0.16 per cent and the Paris CAC 40 was down 0.27 per cent.
Earlier in Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 Index fell 0.4 per cent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 0.2 per cent and South Korea’s Kospi dropped 0.8 per cent.
Mainland Chinese shares were mixed, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index falling 0.2 per cent while the smaller Shenzhen Composite Index gained 0.4 per cent.
