Dow wows on record-setting day
BREAKS 2007 MARK: New York market surges following assurances out of China
TORONTO — Assurances from China’s leadership that the government will make sure economic targets will be met helped send North American stock markets higher Tuesday and pushed New York’s Dow industrials to a record high. The Dow closed up 125.95 points to 14,253.77, breaking through its previous record high from October 2007, after earlier hitting an intraday record of 14,286.
Toronto’s S&P/TSX composite index closed well off the highs of the session, giving up a 113-point jump to close up 28.63 points to 12,736.04.
The main Toronto index still has a long way to go before hitting its old record high of 14,467 from June 30, 2008, a couple of months before the start of the financial crisis triggered by the collapse of American investment bank Lehman Bros.
Other New York indexes surged amid another sign the American housing market is gaining momentum and a strong reading from the U.S. service sector.
The Nasdaq composite index climbed 42.10 points to 3,224.13, while the S&P 500 index climbed 14.59 points to 1,539.79.
The Canadian dollar, meanwhile, edged down 0.03 of a cent to 97.28 cents US a day before the Bank of Canada makes its next announcement on interest rates.
The bank could signal that interest rate hikes are even further down the road than thought because of persistent economic weakness.
In the U.S., CoreLogic, a real estate data provider, said U.S. home prices rose 9.7 per cent in January from a year earlier. That’s up from an 8.3 per cent increase in December and the biggest annual gain since April 2006. Home prices also rose 0.7 per cent in January from December. The base metals sector was up 0.4 per cent while May copper on the Nymex rose one cent to $3.51 US. The April crude contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange was ahead 70 cents to $90.82 US a barrel, sending the energy sector ahead 0.32 per cent.