Canadian Stocks Turning In Mixed Performance

(RTTNews) - After opening marginally up and advancing further, the Canadian market slipped into negative territory Friday morning, but recovered swiftly to move higher, riding on strong gains in technology and materials sectors.

Reports that Iran and the U.S. have agreed to a framework for a 60-day extension of the ceasefire helped lift sentiment.

The agreement would purportedly facilitate the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and enable fresh negotiations over Iran's nuclear program, although President Donald Trump has yet to sign off on the deal.

The benchmark S&P/TSX Composite Index was up 44.99 points or 0.13% at 34,562.69 half an hour past noon. Earlier, the index touched a low of 34,423.30 and a high of 34,696.03.

Tech stocks are up, tracking gains of U.S. peers after Dell reported better than expected first quarter results and raised its full-year guidance. The Information Technology Capped Index climbed nearly 5%.

Celestica Inc soared nearly 9.5%. Coveo Solutions climbed 8%. BlackBerry, Kinaxis, Lightspeed Commerce, Shopify, Constellation Software, Descartes Systems Group, Docebo, CGI Inc., Open Text Corporation, Sangoma Technologies and Enghouse Systems gained 2%-5%.

In the materials sector, Aya Gold & Silver, Equinox Gold Corp., Orla Mining, Montage Gold Corp., Wesdome Gold Mines, K92 Mining, Lundin Gold and Aris Mining moved up 4%-7%.

Energy and utilities stocks are notably lower, with the indices tracking the performance of stocks from these sectors going down by about 1.2%.

Laurentian Bank of Canada reported a net loss of $20.6 million and a diluted loss per share of $0.50 for the second quarter of 2026, compared with net income of $32.3 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.69 for the second quarter of 2025. The stock drifted down by about 0.5%.

In economic news, data from Statistics Canada showed Canada's GDP decreased at an annualized 0.1% rate in the first three months of 2026, extending the 1% drop in the previous period, and entering into a technical recession. GDP was expected to expand 1.5% in the first quarter.

The Canadian economy likely expanded 0.4% month-over-month in April 2026, the most since January 2025, recovering from a 0.1% drop in March, according to preliminary estimates.