Canadian shares tumbled as energy producers and miners retreated with the slump of commodities amid a standoff in Greek debt talks with a Friday deadline looming.
The resource-heavy benchmark Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index (TSE:OSPTX) lost 1.1 percent at 12:38 p.m. in Toronto. Four shares declined for every issue that advanced as all of the ten main share groups were in the negative territory.
The energy sector, the main index's second most heavily weighted group, tumbled 1.6 percent as oil, Canada’s largest export, eased ahead of the OPEC meeting.
Suncor Energy (TSE:SU), Canada's largest oil sands producer, decreased 0.7 percent to C$36.04. Enbridge (TSE:ENB), Canada's largest pipeline company, declined 1.9 percent to C$59.18.
Ballard Power Systems (TSE:BLD) fell 2.6 percent to C$2.58 after saying it has received a five-year extension to operate and support a fleet of eight hydrogen fuel-cell buses in London. Financial terms of the contract extension weren’t disclosed.
Light, sweet oil for July delivery recently fell 1 percent to $59.07 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The materials sub-index, which includes mining shares, sank 1.5 percent as gold hit a one-month low amid U.S. data.
Goldcorp (TSE:G), Canada’s largest gold miner by market value, tanked 1.1 percent to C$1.1 percent to C$21.87. Barrick Gold (TSE:ABX), the second-largest, surrendered 2.6 percent to C$14.55.
Financials, the index's most heavily weighted sector, decreased 0.8 percent.
Canadian Western Bank (TSE:CWB) skidded 0.4 percent to C$28.50 even as it raised its dividend 5 percent to C$0.22 per share and it reported a fiscal second-quarter profit of C$0.67 per share, up 6 percent from a year earlier.
Royal Bank of Canada (TSE:RY), which has the heaviest weighting in the index, dropped 0.8 percent to C$79.66. Toronto-Dominion Bank (TSE:TD), the second-largest bank by market value, sagged 1 percent t oC$43.61.
Bombardier (TSE:BBD.B) fell 3.1 percent to C$2.52, reversing an earlier gain. The Montreal, Quebec-based company said it has received a contract to make 119 trams for the transport authority in Vienna, Austria. The contract is valued at about $480 million.
The junior S&P/TSX Venture Composite Index (CVE:OSPVX) slid 0.7 percent to 686.51 at 12:20 p.m. in Toronto.
In the U.S. market, shares dropped today, following sharp swings in government bonds across the globe. The S&P 500 (INDEXSP:.INX) slipped 0.4 percent to 2,105.03 at 11:28 a.m. in New York. The 30-company Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDEXDJX:.DJI) skidded 0.5 percent to 17,983, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (INDEXNASDAQ:NDX) slipped 0.3 percent to 4,507.08. Most followed shares included T-Mobile, Dish Networks, Wendy’s, J.M. Smucker, Michaels Cos, L Brands, Five Below, Nordstrom, FireEye, Molycorp, and Ciena.