Oil plunge drags down S&P/TSX composite, as tech stocks also take a hit

Falling energy prices tugged Canada’s main stock index downward on Tuesday as producers responded to developments in the Middle East and China.

The S&P/TSX composite index dipped by 32.09 points to 24,439.08.

The 4.8 per cent loss for Canadian energy stocks arrived in lockstep with oil price declines of roughly four per cent on Tuesday. The November West Texas intermediate crude contract dropped US$3.25 to US$70.58 per barrel and the November natural gas contract nudged up less than a penny to US$2.50 per mmBTU.

A barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, has fallen back below US$75 from more than US$80 last week.

“That’s resulted in a fairly significant amount of volatility, obviously, in the Canadian space, just given the weight of energy stocks here,” said Mike Archibald, vice-president and portfolio manager with AGF Investments Inc.

Crude has weakened as China’s flagging economic growth raises concerns about weaker-than-expected demand for oil, prompting a “knock-on effect” in Canada, he said.

Meanwhile, worries have receded about Israel possibly attacking Iranian oil facilities as part of its retaliation against Iran’s missile attack early this month.

“That really shook the energy market,” said Archibald of reports that Israel’s president assured President Joe Biden a planned retaliatory attack on Iran will not home in on nuclear and oil sites.

“All of the big-cap producers are down 3.5 to five per cent.”

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 324.80 points at 42,740.29. The S&P 500 index was down 44.59 points at 5,815.26, while the Nasdaq composite was down 187.10 points at 18,315.59.

Nvidia weighed heavily on the S&P 500, falling 4.5 per cent. It’s a cooldown for the chip company, whose stock remains up 173.7 per cent year to date on euphoria about the profits created by the artificial-intelligence technology boom.

Dutch chip supplier also ASML fell, with its U.S.-traded shares down 15.6 per cent, after CEO Christophe Fouquet said AI continues to offer strong upside potential but “other market segments are taking longer to recover.”

“That’s really rolled over all of the semi(conductor) and chip companies in the U.S. market,” Archibald said.

“Clearly there’s a bit of a shift happening here in the market today away from technology.”

In Canada, stock drops at Teck Resources Ltd. and Hudbay Minerals Inc. helped drive a 2.5 per cent fall in base metals on Tuesday.

“The copper companies are really taking it hard today. Part of that was just on the expectation of more stimulus out of China, and they didn’t necessarily get that,” said Archibald, pointing to a lack of detail on stimulus measures from that country, which consumers more than half of the world’s refined copper.

Offsetting the slump in energy, technology and base metals was the finance index, which inched up on better-than-expected inflation news out of Ottawa.

The annual inflation rate continued to slow in September as drivers paid lower prices for gasoline compared with last year, Statistics Canada said Tuesday. Its consumer price index for last month was up 1.6 per cent from a year ago compared with a year-over-year bump of two per cent in August.

“That should start to spur on a little bit more demand for loans,” Archibald said.

“In a lower rate environment, the wheels of commerce move a little bit quicker and that will be very beneficial for the financials.”

The Canadian dollar traded for 72.44 cents US compared with 72.67 cents on Friday.

The December gold contract was up US$13.30 at US$2,678.90 an ounce and the December copper contract was down seven cents at US$4.34 a pound.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 15, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:GSPTSE, TSX:CADUSD=X, TSX:TECK.B, TSX:HBM)

— With files from The Associated Press

Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press