Canadian Stocks Scale New High Amid Positivity From U.S.-China Trade Talks

(RTTNews) - Hopes of a smoother U.S.-China relations post London trade talks, triggered Canadian stocks to move higher on Wednesday.

Today, the Canadian benchmark stock market index, S&P/TSX Composite Index opened near yesterday's close and within a couple of hours reached an intraday high of 26,586.76.

However, unable to hold on the position, it fell to hit the day's low around noon. Later gaining momentum, the index rose to close at 26,524.16, up by 97.85 (or 0.37%). This is a new record high for index.

In a significant development following two-day talks between U.S. and Chinese officials in London to ease the tariff conflict, today the U.S. President Donald Trump stated that a deal with China has been done.

Trump added that U.S. will allow Chinese students to study in American colleges, and reciprocally, China has agreed to supply the much-needed rare earth minerals for the U.S. Brisk rare earth trade is seen as a positive for the Canadian mining sector.

However, on the data front, Statistics Canada reported that the total value of building permits in Canada fell by 6.6% month-over-month, below market expectations affecting Real Estate sector stocks today.

Among the major sectors that moved up today, Materials, Healthcare, IT, Consumer Discretionary, and Energy prominently gained from 0.44% to 2.21%.

Among the individual stocks, Vermilion Energy (4.78%), Parex Resources (3.97%), Imperial Oil (2.83%), Dollarama Inc (9.80%), Celestica (5.04%) and Shopify Inc (3.46%) were the notable gainers.

Among the sectors that moved down, Financials (0.34%), Real Estate (0.59%), and Consumer Staples (1.30%) were the major losers.

Among the individual stocks, Firstservice Corp (1.01%) and The North West Company (4.22%) were the notable losers.