With little other economic data to guide markets on Monday, the first day of trading following the Easter long weekend, investor sentiment was led downward by a disappointing jobs report released in the U.S. on Good Friday.
In Toronto, the S&P/TSX was at its lowest level since January, down 84.61 points, or 0.70 per cent, to 12,018.50. Eight of the 10 sub-indexes declined, led by health care and consumer products, but the most heavily valued decliners were financials and energy issues. Manulife Financial shares fell 3.12 per cent to $12.73 on Monday, and Sun Life Financial dropped 3.31 per cent to $22.77. Cenovus Energy saw its share price dip 1.19 per cent to $33.92.
"It's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the Friday news in the face of very thin markets," Irwin Michael, a money manager at ABC Funds in Toronto, told Bloomberg. "A good deal of the negativity in the market is a function of the fact that U.S. employment numbers disappointed people."
The U.S. economy added 120,000 jobs in March —about 85,000 short of expectations following on economic data showing a slow-but-steady improvement in the country's economic situation.
"The economy does continue to grow, but slowly," John Carey of Pioneer Investments in Boston told Bloomberg. "That's been the source of frustration for a lot of investors, that we haven't had the big forward movement in the economy like we have in the past."
Also weighing on the markets Monday was a report showing China's consumer price inflation came in higher than expected.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 130.55 points, or one per cent, to 12,929.59 on Monday, while the Nasdaq composite fell 33.42 points, or 1.08 per cent, to 3,047.08.
Canada's junior Venture exchange lost 32.39 points, or 2.19 per cent, to close at 1,448.65.
The price of crude oil pared some of its earlier losses on Monday, closing at $102.46 US a barrel, down 85 cents US. The price of gold rose $13.80 USto $1,643.90 US an ounce.
The Canadian dollar slipped 27 basis points, closing at $1.035 US.
There was some good news for Canadian business on Monday. The Bank of Canada's Business Outlook and Senior Loan Officer surveys provided an upbeat picture of the country's business sector.
"On the heels of a robust Canadian jobs print that stood up to our scrutiny on the details and which cannot be explained away by either weather or sampling error, businesses signalled upbeat expectations for sales growth by the widest margin since the first quarter of 2010," said Scotia Capital economists Derek Holt and Dov Zigler in an afternoon commentary.
"This is a trend-busting result that fully reverses what had been a disconcerting swing lower throughout last year. There is typically little if any discernible market effect stemming from these reports, but they feed into BoC thinking on the forward looking state of the economy."
