{"id":20234,"date":"2019-02-06T09:00:51","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T09:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ceo-na.com\/?p=20234"},"modified":"2019-02-06T18:21:14","modified_gmt":"2019-02-06T18:21:14","slug":"pot-is-helping-make-the-stock-index-higher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/opinion\/pot-is-helping-make-the-stock-index-higher\/","title":{"rendered":"Pot is helping\u00a0make the stock index higher"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>Canada\u2019s main stock index reached its highest level in four months following a surge on cannabis stocks.<\/em><\/strong><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The S&amp;P\/TSX composite index closed up 96.01 points at 15,602.32 after hitting an intraday peak of 15,606.34. That\u2019s the highest level since Oct. 8.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe recent rally in the health-care sector, particularly the pot stocks, is providing a big portion of the lift for the TSX,\u201d said Craig Fehr, a Canadian market strategist for Edward Jones.<\/p>\n<p>The health care sector gained 5% on the day led by cannabis heavyweights Aphria Inc. which rose by nearly 13%, Cronos Group Inc. 12% and Aurora Cannabis 8.8% on heavy trading.<\/p>\n<p>Technology was up 1.6% to follow the direction of the U.S. sector. Energy was up more than 1% despite a dip in crude oil prices.<\/p>\n<p>North American markets have been driven higher by an improved outlook for economic growth, higher corporate profits, dovish monetary policy, particularly on interest rate hikes, and hope that a US-China trade skirmish will be resolved.<\/p>\n<p>US corporate profits have set a positive tone even though they are a bit more mixed than a year ago. Alphabet Inc. beat analyst expectations in reporting after markets closed that it earned US$8.95 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with a loss a year earlier. Net revenues after deducting advertising commissions were US$31.84 billion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re getting some relief in the market as earnings announcements have come in that show that corporate America&#8211;and I think as we start to see TSX reports, corporate Canada as well&#8211;is a little bit healthier than perhaps was the expectation as we went through that decline in late 2018,\u201d said Fehr.<\/p>\n<p>The Canadian corporate profit outlook is \u201cdecent\u201d even though the TSX doesn\u2019t have the balance across industries and sectors like the US does, he added.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo we can see quarter to quarter things can be a bit distorted, but I think the corporate profit outlook is still more positive than negative at this stage for the TSX,\u201d Fehr concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canada\u2019s main stock index reached its highest level in four  [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20235,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[98,1385,1794,1793,1792],"class_list":["post-20234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-ceo-north-america","tag-ceo-northam","tag-pot-is-helping-make-the-stock-index-higher","tag-sp-tsx","tag-stock-index"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20234"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20236,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20234\/revisions\/20236"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}