Canada’s main stock index opened higher on Thursday, led by shares of marijuana producers and precious metal miners as gold prices gained after the dollar slumped.
The Toronto Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX composite index was up 55.6 points, or 0.34 percent, at 16,205.52.
Health care stocks rose 2 per cent in early trading, paced by marijuana producers.
Canopy Growth Corp. was up 3.5 per cent, while rivals Aphria Inc. and Aurora Cannabis Inc. increased 2.7 per cent and 5.2 per cent, respectively.
In New York, Tilray Inc., a B.C.-based producer, was up 6 per cent in early trading a day jumping 38 per cent in wild trading that saw it surge by more than 90 per cent then briefly dropping into negative territory and rebounding.
U.S. stocks rose at the open with the S&P 500 hitting a record high on Thursday, helped by a bounce back in technology stocks and relief that fresh U.S. and China tariffs were less damaging than feared.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 113.63 points, or 0.43 per cent, at the open to 26,519.39. The S&P 500 opened higher by 11.78 points, or 0.41 per cent, at 2,919.73. The Nasdaq Composite gained 43.49 points, or 0.55 per cent, to 7,993.53 at the opening bell.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq, which has gained the most of Wall Street’s three big indexes this year despite the trade hiccups, ended the session slightly lower on Wednesday.
“Technology stocks are very much back in the game, there are no broad-based calls of the tech rally being over,” said Michael Antonelli, managing director, institutional sales trading at Robert W. Baird in Milwaukee.
Oil prices slipped on Thursday after U.S. President Donald Trump called on OPEC to “get prices down now!” ahead of a meeting of major oil exporters in Algeria this weekend.
Brent crude oil was down 40 cents at $79.00 a barrel. U.S. light crude oil was unchanged at $71.12 a barrel after rising nearly 2 percent on Wednesday.
The North Sea benchmark has been trading close to $80 a barrel, near its highest for almost four years, on expectations that U.S. sanctions against Iran, OPEC’s third biggest producer, will reduce supply in world markets.
The U.S. sanctions were imposed by Trump in response to Iran’s nuclear program, which the White House says is designed to produce weapons, an allegation Tehran denies.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other producers, including Russia, meet on Sunday in Algeria to discuss how to allocate supply increases to offset the loss of Iranian barrels.
The meeting is unlikely to agree an official rise in crude output, although pressure is mounting on top producers to prevent a spike in prices.
Reuters and The Canadian Press