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TORONTO, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) -- Canada's main stock market in Toronto held modest gains Wednesday over a rally in the price of bullion, which helped boost the resources shares.
After a two-day drop, the Toronto Stock Exchange's benchmark Standard & Poor's/TSX Composite Index bounced up 30.6 points, or 0.22 percent, to 13,875.33 points, as Health Care logged the biggest increase by 1.35 percent.
Five of the eight most weighed sectors lost ground, with Utilities leading the fall by 1.39 percent. Canada's gas and electricity distributor Fortis Inc. declined 1.8 percent to 38.21 Canadian dollars (about 29.57 U.S. dollars) a share.
And the most influential sector Financials lowered 0.93 percent as Toronto-Dominion Bank, the second biggest bank in Canada, decreased 1.13 percent to 52.37 Canadian dollars a share.
But the losses were overpowered by the gains from the resources shares over a rally in gold prices, as the most active gold contract for December delivery rose 14.4 U.S. dollars, or 1.24 percent, to settle at 1,179.80 dollars per ounce on the COMEX division of the New York Mercantile Exchange Wednesday. And the gold price even hit a three-month high in the midday trading.
The mining sector was up 0.45 percent while the energy sector rallied 1.22 percent.
The most active movers in TSX included B2Gold Corp., jumping 10.24 percent to 1.83 Canadian dollars a share, and Yamana Gold Inc., spiking 7.79 percent to 3.32 Canadian dollars a share.
And the world's biggest gold producer Barrick Gold Corp. shares also rose 8.87 percent to 10.56 Canadian dollars.
Meanwhile, most of the gas and oil companies were in the rising streak, when Statistics Canada issued the latest supply and disposition of refined petroleum products Wednesday, saying that the Canadian refineries received 8.8 million cubic meters of crude oil in July, up 0.3 percent compared with the same month in 2014.
Encana Corp. shares advanced 2.84 percent to 11.24 Canadian dollars while Suncor Energy Inc. shares strengthened 1.4 percent to 37.01 Canadian dollars.
However, the federal agency also showed that the domestic sales of refined petroleum products totalled 9.3 million cubic meters in July, down 6.5 percent from July 2014.
And on the economic front, investors were still worried about the solidity of the U.S. economic growth, which is considered as a supportive factor to the Canadian economy, since the latest report on U.S. retail sales activity was disappointing.
Analysts are doubting whether the U.S. central bank will lift its benchmark interest rates in the rest of the year. "In case there was anyone out there still thinking that an October rate hike was still a possibility -- that possibility is dimming," said Jennifer Lee, a senior economist from Bank of Montreal in a report Wednesday.
On the currency front, the Canadian dollar on Wednesday rose to 0.7739 U.S. dollar, when compared with 0.7681 U.S. dollar Tuesday.
