Toronto stocks finished the week on a positive note on Friday on bargain-hunting after a dismal start to 2005, fortified by a sweetened offer to investors by brewery merger partners Molson Inc and Adolph Coors Co. The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index gained 48.02 points, or 0.53 percent, to close at 9,057.16. For the week, the index gained almost 0.57 percent.
"With the sell-off we had at the start of the year, people may be repositioning their portfolios to more defensive companies like consumer staples," said Julie Brough, senior advisor at Morgan Meighen & Associates.
"Nice healthy dividends, stable cash flows and nothing that usually goes seriously wrong."
With a 1.35 percent rise, the group was the leading gainer on the strength of Molson, whose shares jumped C$1.29, or 3.56 percent, to C$37.50 after the brewer said late on Thursday it had raised the special dividend offer to shareholders in its merger deal with Coors.
Molson was one of the most active issues on the index, with more than 10 million shares traded.
The financial group, which makes up a third of the overall index, rebounded 0.31 percent after heavy selling the previous session.
"Thursday was a fairly significant sell-off so you're probably getting some people coming in and trying to pick up some of these that are better priced," Brough said.
Sun Life Financial gained 41 Canadian cents, or 1.05 percent, to C$39.62. Bank of Nova Scotia rose 41 Canadian cents, or 1.04 percent, to C$39.81.
The industrials group gained 0.92 percent with shares of Canadian National Railway among the leaders. Canada's largest railway rose C$1.50, or 2.22 percent, to C$69.00 after the railway said on Friday it had reached a tentative contract deal with 2,250 track maintenance workers.
Canadian Pacific Railway, the country's No 2 railway, gained C$1.02, or 2.62 percent, to C$39.90.
Analysts are looking ahead to later in the month when the corporate earnings season takes center stage.
"Last year was a really strong year, and I think there's still some positive expectation but a little more caution in that positive expectation," Brough said.
Eight of Toronto's 10 main subindexes finished in positive territory.
Market momentum was positive, with 798 issues advancing and 548 declining. Volume of 242 million shares worth C$3.8 billion were traded.
Toronto's blue-chip S&P/TSX 60 index rose a slim 2.79 points, or 0.56 percent, to 501.18.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average gained 52.17 points, or 0.5 percent, to 10,558.00. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index gained 17.35 points, or 0.84 percent, to 2,087.91.
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