U.S. economic woes weigh down market

The Toronto stock market ended January trading with a triple-digit slide, weighed down by U.S. economic concerns and uncertainty over how BlackBerry’s new smartphones will be received by consumers.

The S&P/TSX composite index fell 109.20 points to 12,685.24 but still ahead for the month, while the TSX Venture Exchange slipped 0.64 points to 1,221.71.

The company formerly known as Research In Motion Ltd. again weighed on the TSX, a day after the launch of its new BlackBerry 10 product lineup. BlackBerry’s stock was down a further 94¢ or 6.78% to $12.92 on very heavy volume of 13 million shares, after tumbling almost 12% Wednesday.

“There’s a couple of reasons for the weakness we’re seeing [and] one of them is that it’s had a phenomenal run and investors are taking some profits,” said Jennifer Dowty, portfolio manager at Manulife Asset Management.

But availability has become an issue because U.S. customers won’t be able to get the BlackBerry Z10 until March, a month later than in Canada.

“Many analysts had anticipated the launch would be Canada and the U.S. at the same time and that would be in February. And then when we heard it’s not going to be occurring until mid-March in the U.S. That was certainly a disappointment,” she said.

In recent weeks, RIM stock had soared 200% from its 52-week low of $6.10 of last September in anticipation over the new product, seen as a make-or-break effort by the company. BlackBerry has lost market share to Apple’s iPhone and the Galaxy brand of smartphones from Samsung.

The Canadian dollar closed above parity for the first time since the Bank of Canada signalled a week ago that interest rate hikes willprobably occur later than previously thought because of economic weakness. The loonie moved up US0.42¢ to US100.27¢ after Statistics Canada reported gross domestic product grew by 0.3% in November, better than the 0.2% reading that had been expected. Year over year, GDP was ahead by 1.3%.

U.S. markets were lacklustre a day after data showed the U.S. economy stalled late last year, shrinking at an annual rate of 0.1% from October through December for the first time since the recession ended.

The negative reading raised doubts about the sustainability of a rally that has seen the Dow surge 6.3% since the start of the year, climbing close to 14,000 and within touching distance of its record level.

The Dow Jones industrials gave back 49.84 points to 13,860.58, the Nasdaq slipped 0.18 of a point to 3,142.13 while the S&P 500 index shed 3.85 points to 1,498.11.

All TSX sectors were lower save for a slight gain in telecoms.