TSX breaks 3-day winning streak; materials, energy stocks drag
By Siddarth S and Nivedita Balu
(Reuters) -Toronto stocks snapped a three-day winning streak on Monday, weighed by materials and energy shares as commodity prices slipped over concerns of a weak China economic recovery and debt-laden property market.
The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index was down 117.03 points, or 0.6%, at 20,290.54.
Worries over China's demand outlook worsened after Country Garden, the country's largest private property developer, sought to delay a payment on a private onshore bond for the first time after suspending trading in 11 onshore bonds, a source said.
The move was a fresh blow to policymakers' efforts to revive investor confidence in the world's second-largest economy and largest oil and metals consumer.
"Everybody is waiting to find what China is going to do because depending on the commodity, almost half of the demand comes out of China," said Laura Lau, chief investment officer with Brompton Group.
Market participants keenly awaited Canada's inflation data, due later this week, to assess the Bank of Canada's (BoC) monetary policy trajectory.
"The Bank of Canada is cognizant of the fact that we are more interest sensitive and it is going to be hard to raise interest rates anymore," Lau said.
Materials stocks, which include miners and fertilizer companies, lost 1.8%, leading sectoral losses as prices of both base and precious metals dipped over China's property market woes and a stronger dollar. [GOL/] [MET/L]
The energy sector dropped 0.4% as crude prices slipped over 1% on worries over China's faltering economic recovery. [O/R]
Suncor Energy is among the companies set to report quarterly results later in the day.
(Reporting by Siddarth S in Bengaluru and Nivedita Balu in Toronto; Editing by Pooja Desai and Richard Chang)
