Canadian Stocks Close Lower For 5th Straight Day

(RTTNews) - The Canadian market ended sharply lower on Tuesday with scores of frontline stocks, with the exception of a select few from the energy sector, tumbled amid rising worries about growth, interest rate hikes and the impact of the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Technology stocks plunged tracking a sell-off in the U.S. tech space. Consumer discretionary, healthcare, financials, materials and industrials stocks too ended sharply lower.

The benchmark S&P/TSX Composite Index ended with a loss of 321.08 points or 1.53% at 20,690.81, the day's low. With today's loss, the index has shed about 6.2% since last Wednesday.

The Information Technology Capped Index tanked 3.66%. Hut 8 Mining Corp (HUT.TO), Softchoice Corp (SFTC.TO), Lightspeed Commerce (LSPD.TO), Shopify Inc (SHOP.TO), Magnet Forensics (MAGT.TO), BlackBerry (BB.TO), Nuvei Corp (NVEI.TO) and Tecsys Inc (TCS.TO) lost 4 to 8.5%.

Consumer discretionary stocks Spin Master (TOY.TO), Canada Goose Holdings (GOOS.TO), Aritzia Inc (ATZ.TO), Mty Food Group (MTY.TO), Magna International (MG.TO), Gildan Activewear (GIL.TO) and Martinrea International (MRE.TO) ended lower by 3 to 5.8%.

In the healthcare sector, Cronos Group (CRON.TO), Aurora Cannabis (ACB.TO), Bausch Health Companies (BHC.TO), Canopy Growth Corp (WEED.TO) and Tilray Inc (TLRY.TO) shed 3 to 4.5%.

Among financials shares, Manulife Financial (MFC.TO), Sun Life Financial (SLF.TO), CDN Western Bank (CWB.TO), Laurentian Bank (LB.TO), National Bank of Canada (NA.TO), Bank of Montreal (BMO.TO) and Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD.TO) lost 1.7 to 2.4%.

Ivanhoe Mines (IVN.TO), Lithium Americas Corp (LAC.TO), MAG Silver Corp (MAG.TO), First Quantum Minerals (FM.TO), Kinross Gold (K.TO), Lundin Mining (LUN.TO) and Hudbay Minerals (HBM.TO) were among the major losers in the materials section.

Among industrials shares, Air Canada (AC.TO) ended lower by 7.25%. The company reported an operating loss of $550 million in the first quarter of 2022, compared to an operating loss of $1.049 billion in the first quarter of 2021.

Bombardier Inc (BBD.B.TO) plunged more than 8%. Tfi International (TFII.TO), Ballard Power Systems (BLDP.TO), Ats Automation (ATA.TO), Cargojet (CJT.TO), WSP Global Inc (WSP.TO), Cae Inc (CAE.TO) and Toromont Industries (TIH.TO) ended lower by 3 to 6%.

On the economic front, data released by Statistics Canada showed manufacturing sales in Canada likely rose 1.7% from a month earlier in March of 2022, slowing from a 4.2% advance in the prior month.