Canada's main stock index found new strength by noon EST on Friday, as investors were cautious after a tech rout in the previous session, while assessing data that showed unemployment rate hit a six-month high in October.
Equities in Toronto pointed lower on Friday, after Canadian shares were caught up in an artificial intelligence-driven rout in U.S. stocks in the prior session.
The TSX recovered 236.84 points to break for lunch Friday at 35,842.11. On the week so far, the index has gained 222 points, or 0.62%.
The Canadian dollar fell 0.43 cents at 70.91 cents U.S.
The government trimmed its budget deficit forecasts for every fiscal year until 2030/31 and said 2027 growth would be slightly less than initially expected.
On the economic calendar, Statistics Canada said employment was little changed in October (-4,700; 0.0%) and the unemployment rate rose 0.2 percentage points to 6.7%.
Elsewhere, the IVEY PMI index decreased to 58.3 in October from 58.2 in September and 52.4 in October 2025
ON BAYSTREET
The TSX Venture Exchange nosed ahead 1.8 points to 808.12. The index has eked ahead 4.3 points, or 0.5%, since last Friday.
Eight of the 12 subgroups were in the green by noon, as health-care rocketed 2%, while gold shone brighter 1.8%, and information technology gained 1.6%.
The four laggards were weighed most by industrials, down 0.5%, real-estate, off 0.4%, and telecoms, dipping 0.3%.
ON WALLSTREET
The NASDAQ Composite rebounded on Friday as some investors bought the dip in chip stocks following a punishing selloff that sent the index into correction territory.
The Dow Jones Industrial index eked into plus territory 12.4 points to 51,535.46.
The S&P 500 index recovered 63.99 points to 7,417.72.
The tech-heavy NASDAQ staged a comeback climbing 391.30 points, or 1.6%, to 24,706.30.
All three major averages are poised for losses on the week, even after Wednesday’s big rally in the wake of the election. The NASDAQ is off by almost 3% and the S&P 500 by 2%. The 30-stock Dow is the outperformer, lower by less than 1% week to date.
Moderna shares popped $8.86, or 21.4%, to $262.86.
The heavy selling Thursday sent the three major stock averages to their worst one-day losses since April 2025. The NASDAQ Composite tumbled 5.5%, closing more than 10% below its most recent high and putting it in what Wall Street regards as a correction. The broad-market S&P 500 lost 4.4%, while the Dow fell more than 1,800 points, or 3.4%.
Worries of a potential slowdown in data center construction following big Democratic wins in the House and Senate and key state governorships hit U.S. markets hard on Thursday.
Top Democrats have called for the curbing of the data center buildout since the party’s big election win. Governor-Elect Gina Hinojosa of Texas, a key data center hub in the country, said in a CNN interview Thursday evening, “We will have laws to protect Texans, and we need to stop what we are doing with data centers until we have those protections.”
Investors reacted to the latest nonfarm payrolls report, which came in much better than expected at an increase of 165,000 in October.
That was well above the 59,000 that economists polled by Dow Jones had anticipated. The unemployment rate also moved down to 4.1%.
Economists had expected it to hold steady at 4.2%.
Prices for the 10-year Treasury hesitated, raising yields to 4.86% from Wednesday’s 4.84%. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.
Oil prices sagged 37 cents to $90.15 U.S. a barrel.
Gold prices flopped $44.00 to $4,069.50 U.S. an ounce.
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