By IANS,
Toronto : The Toronto stock market crossed the 10,000-mark on the opening day of the week with the composite index posting a 395.32-point gain Tuesday.
Riding on higher commodity and oil prices, the loonie, as the Canadian dollar is called, also gained more than two cents against the American dollar, ending the day at 8.70 cents US.
The composite index ended at 10,116, posting a gain of 4.07 percent since Friday.
Meanwhile, data for October released Tuesday showed the worst monthly performance by Canadian mutual funds in a decade.
Investment researcher Morningstar Inc. Canada – subsidiary of Chicago-based Morningstar Inc. – said all but four of its 43 mutual fund Indices suffered losses in October, including 20 that lost more than 10 percent.
It said many fund groups suffered their biggest losses since the market crash of 1987 as investors dumped equities to buy safe US treasury bills.
“Credit essentially came to a grinding halt in the middle of the month,” Philip Lee, fund analyst for Morningstar Inc., said in a statement.
“When stalwart companies such as AT&T and GE had trouble raising money in the short-term commercial paper market, investors ran for the hills.
“Lack of access to short-term credit hampers a company’s ability to operate on a daily basis, which can impact the economy in a meaningful way,” he said.
The data shows that energy and industrial specific fund indices, Precious Metals Equity and Natural Resources Equity, saw staggering losses of 38.4 percent and 28.9 percent.
Lee said: “Concerns about the global economy dampened the outlook for demand in energy and industrial metals. This certainly didn’t play out well for the Canadian equity market, which is heavily influenced by energy and materials stocks.”