Photo: Contributed
TORONTO — North American stock markets dipped to close a relatively flat week on signs of a slowing U.S. recovery and weakness in the American technology sector.
Markets started moved lower after the U.S. government announced it will ban Chinese-owned TikTok and WeChat from U.S. app stores on Sunday.
They partially recovered in afternoon trading, with U.S. markets ending down for a third straight week.
“The negative sentiment that we’ve seen from the U.S. equity markets over the last couple of weeks has just continued to bleed over into this week,” said Macan Nia, senior investment strategist at Manulife Investment Management.
Friday was also unique because it was “quadruple witching,” a day that marks the quarterly expiration of U.S. stock options, stock index futures and index option contracts.
Volumes in the option market over the past couple of weeks have been very high with some technology companies seeing more activity in options than in the underlining securities.
“That speaks to the wonkiness,” Nia said in an interview.
The S&P/TSX composite index closed down 47.75 points to 16,198.97 after hitting an intraday high of 16,310.03.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 244.56 points at 27,657.42. The S&P 500 index was down 37.54 points at 3,319.47, while the Nasdaq composite was down 116.99 points at 10,793.28.
The Canadian dollar traded for 75.84 cents US compared with 75.76 cents US on Thursday.
All Okanagan Biz Stories
