TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index finished more than 230 points lower on Thursday, weighed down by losses in the technology sector, while U.S. markets also fell amid a defensive rotation.
Brian Madden, chief investment officer with First Avenue Investment Counsel, said investors were taking profits ahead of the end of the year and as earnings season starts to wind down.
“It does look like people are selling winners and things that are more defensive are benefiting from funds flow rotation,” he said.
In Canada, Madden said this rotation has benefited telcoms, utilities and gold companies.
Pushing Canada’s benchmark index lower on Thursday was Shopify Inc., which lost 4.47 per cent on the day. On Tuesday, the e-commerce firm reported a blockbuster third quarter with a profit of US$264 million and 32 per cent jump in revenue compared with a year ago.
“Sometimes when valuations are high and expectations are high, good enough isn’t good enough. You have to beat and raise … and beat and raise again on every key performance indicator,” Madden said regarding Shopify’s earnings.
Canadian investors were also continuing to digest the latest federal budget, released on Tuesday. Madden said longer-term investors were “encouraged by the focus on building economic capacity” and other factors.
The S&P/TSX composite index was down 234.89 points at 29,868.59.
Meanwhile Wall Street lost ground Thursday as influential technology stocks fall and once again steer the broader market. The technology sector has been the driving force behind the market’s direction, whether up or down, all week.
The biggest weights on the market included Nvidia, which fell 3.7 per cent, and Microsoft, which fell two per cent. Their huge values give them outsized influence over the market’s direction.
Wall Street is also relying more on economic updates from other private sources.
Job cuts in the U.S. surged 175 per cent in October from a year ago, according to a report released Thursday from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The reasons include softer consumer and corporate spending, rising costs, and the adoption of artificial intelligence.
“What the market may be reacting to stateside is the Challenger job cuts announcements,” Madden said.
“These are the large publicly disclosed layoff notices that U.S. companies have put forth. They went up a lot. There were 153,000 such job cuts, which is the most for a month of October going back to almost the turn of the century.”
Due to the U.S. government shutdown preventing the release of U.S. employment figures, he said that the Challenger jobs report may be getting more attention than it otherwise would.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 398.70 points at 46,912.30. The S&P 500 index was down 75.97 points at 6,720.32, while the Nasdaq composite was down 445.80 points at 23,053.99.
The Canadian dollar traded for 70.84 cents US compared with 70.82 cents US on Wednesday.
The December crude oil contract was down 17 cents US at US$59.43 per barrel. The December gold contract was down US$1.90 at US$3,991 an ounce.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2025.
— With files from The Associated Press.
Companies in this story: (TSX:GSPTSE, TSX:CADUSD, TSX: SHOP)
