TSX falls nearly 300 points, wiping out year's gains
Last Updated: Monday, January 12, 2009 | 5:38 PM ET
CBC News
It’s back down below 9,000 points.
The little New Year’s rally that briefly cheered investors on the Toronto Stock Exchange has been wiped out.
The TSX composite index tumbled 291.85 points — or 3.2 per cent — to 8,793.33, leaving the key index down 2.1 per cent for the year.
Worries about the economy sent commodity stocks tumbling.
Oil was down $3.24 to $37.59 US.
The market also lost ground following the Bank of Canada's quarterly survey of companies that found business leaders expect to cut jobs this year as sales slow.
U.S. stocks tumbled Monday in the worst two-day slide in more than a month as investors worried about the outlook for embattled bank Citigroup.
New York's Dow Jones industrials fell 125.13 points to 8,474.05, still reeling apparently from the job loss report of Jan. 9 that showed the U.S. lost half a million jobs last month.
The Nasdaq declined 32.8 points to 1,538.79 while the S&P 500 index dipped 20.09 points to 870.26.
“The financials got hit really hard in New York with Citigroup down 17 per cent," said Peter Hodson, senior portfolio manager with Sprott Asset Management in Toronto.
"There’s a lot of chatter about how the fourth quarter is going to be really ugly across the financial sector. You got the home problem, the mortgage problem, and now you're starting to see commercial real estate, credit card problems — it does look like they’re going to throw in the towel in the fourth quarter.”
