TSX GETS BOOST; RECORD HIGHS IN U.S.

The Toronto stock market closed higher Thursday on the final day of first-quarter trading with the market finding support from a surprise profit from tech giant BlackBerry amid the rollout of its new touchscreen Z10 smartphone.

The S&P/TSX composite index gained 50.25 points to 12,749.9.

BlackBerry shares closed up 29¢ or almost 2% at $15.09 after the company posted a profit of US$98 million or 19¢ per share compared with a loss of $125 million or 24¢ per share a year ago.

But the quarter, which ended March 2, didn’t include Z10 sales from the United States since major U.S. carriers didn’t start rolling out the smartphone until last week.

And BlackBerry’s subscriber base, which had been growing until the third quarter, fell to 76 million from 79 million, a sign that more people ditched their BlackBerry in favour of competitors’ phones.

The TSX was in the red for much of the session as another round of worry about the future of the eurozone weighed on sentiment during the final day of a shortened trading week ahead of the Easter holiday weekend.

“There hasn’t really been much in the way of good news out of anywhere,” said Colin Cieszynski, market analyst at CMC Markets Canada.

“Europe is totally dragging, and if anything, it looks like their problems just keep getting worse.”

The Canadian dollar shed early gains to close up US0.05¢ at US98.43¢ amid January gross domestic product figures that showed Canada’s economy grew at a faster than expected clip after faltering at the end of 2012.

Statistics Canada reported that real gross domestic product in January grew by 0.2%. That was better than the 0.1% gain economists had expected and followed a 0.2% dip in December.

U.S. indexes registered gains going into the weekend amid other data that showed that the U.S. economy grew at a slightly faster but still anemic rate at the end of last year.

The Dow Jones industrials index gained 52.38 points to another record high of 14,578.54.

The Nasdaq composite index was 11 points higher to 3,267.52 while the S&P 500 index closed at an all-time high, jumping 6.34 points to 1,569.19, surpassing a previous record from Oct. 9, 2007.

The Commerce Department says the economy grew at an annual rate of 0.4% in the October-December quarter. That was slightly better than the previous estimate of 0.1% growth. The revision reflected stronger business investment and export sales.