Canada’s main stock index closed with a slight gain Friday while U.S. markets slumped on negative expectations in the consumer goods and technology sectors. The gains in Canada were led by telecoms and base metals, helping push the S&P/TSX composite index up 29.90 points at 15,484.32. The results were better than for U.S. markets, which are less tied to commodity prices such as crude oil, said Norman Levine, managing director of Portfolio Management Corp. in Toronto. “The Canadian market has underperformed the U.S. market for quite some time, and it has to do with the fact that our market is nondiversified compared to the U.S. It’s very reliant on, and market weighted toward, resource and financial stocks.”In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average ended down 201.95 points at 24,462.94. The S&P 500 index closed down 22.99 points to 2,670.14 and the Nasdaq composite index was down 91.93 points at 7,146.13.

Source: thestar April 20, 2018 16:43 UTC