Canada’s main stocks index slid more than 1% on Tuesday, caught in a bigger market selloff as global recession worries came to the fore, while energy stocks dived along with oil prices.
The resource-heavy S&P/TSX composite index fell 1.7% to 18,710.74 in morning trading.
Energy stocks tumbled 5.8%, tracking sharp losses in crude prices as concerns about a possible global recession outweighed supply disruption fears, highlighted by an expected production cut in Norway.
The materials sector, which includes precious and base metals miners and fertilizer companies, declined 4.4% as gold and copper prices all lost ground.
Overall, the global mood was downbeat with investors selling stocks, commodities and emerging markets assets while seeking safety in government bonds as surging European gas prices fuelled worries about a further upswing in inflation and aggressive central bank actions to tame it.
“The risk is that inflation expectations are rising fast and driving second-round inflationary effects that will require central banks to tighten even more than they or the market currently conceives,” analysts at Saxo Bank wrote in a note.
Worries about soaring inflation, aggressive interest rate hikes, China’s slowing economy and the Ukraine conflict all drove the benchmark to its worst quarterly performance since March 2020 last week.
A Bank of Canada survey showed on Monday consumer inflation expectations hit fresh highs in the short-term and rose “significantly” over the long-term, bolstering calls for a very rare 75-basis point rate increase.
However, the tech and healthcare sectors, seen as more immune to economic cycles, rose.
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