TSX POSTS 4.16% gain in January

A day of choppy trading in Toronto on Tuesday ended with a small gain for Canada’s benchmark stock index, which rose 4.16% for the month.

The S&P/TSX composite index closed at 12,452.15, a gain of 15.73 points, or 0.13%. Seven of the 10 sub-indexes advanced, led by consumer services and industrials.

The price of crude oil fell US30¢ to US$98.48 a barrel, while gold gained US$6.80 to US$1,737.80 an ounce.

The Canadian dollar, which spent time in positive and negative territory on Tuesday, ended the day at US99.72¢, unchanged from Monday’s close.

“It looked like [the day’s] theme was going to be party like it’s 1999, but the markets have had other ideas and a few curve balls along the way that have ended up creating a number of significant divergences between markets,” said analyst Colin Cieszynski of CMC Markets.

Those curve balls came in the form of economic data on Tuesday that ran the gamut from an unexpected 0.1% drop in Canadian gross domestic product to suggestions of progress in eurozone debt talks, which lifted investors’ spirits for a time.

Investor sentiment turned negative on the release of U.S. data, which were “consistently disappointing,” said BMO Capital Markets senior economist Jennifer Lee. The U.S. Conference Board’s consumer confidence index fell 3.7 points in January after two monthly gains, and the S&P CaseShiller house price index logged its seventh consecutive monthly decline in November, a disappointment after positive reports from the U.S. housing sector recently.

“The bottom line remains, the housing sector still has a long road ahead before it’s considered healthy,” Lee said.

Also on Tuesday, the Institute for Supply Management-chicago’s business barometer fell in December, when analysts had expected an increase.

“The Chicago number in particular suggests though that the numbers weren’t necessarily negative, rather, expectations may have worked themselves too high in the short term,” Cieszynski said.

There is a sense that the overall picture may indeed be improving, according to Greg Taylor, a money manager at Aurion Capital Management in Toronto.

“We’ve had some fairly good reaffirmation that the U.S. economy is on track,” Taylor said. “It also feels like the European headlines are more in the background.”

The Dow Jones industrial average pared some of its earlier losses to close the day at 12,632.91, a drop of 20.81 points, or 0.16%, while the Nasdaq was just above flat with a gain of 1.90 points, or 0.07%, to 2,813.84.

Canada’s junior Venture exchange rose 8.24 points, or 0.51%, to 1,631.75.