Roundup: Canadian stock market ends higher on strong bank earnings and Blackberry upgrade

TORONTO, Nov 29, 2012 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- The Canadian stock market's mainindex hit its highest level of this week on Thursday, boosted bystrong quarterly earnings reports from Canada's biggest bank and arally in shares of Blackberry maker Research in Motion alsosupported the market.

The benchmark S&P/TSX Composite index closed up 62.52 points,or 0.51 percent, to 12,202.85 while S&P/TSX Venture Compositeindex gained 13.01 points, or 1.08 percent, to 1,218.38.

The market sentiment was also lifted by optimism that a dealwould be reached to avoid the U.S. fiscal cliff crisis. Lawmakersand the White House have been in talks for months before thedeadline when the tax hikes and spending cuts threaten to push theU.S. back into recession.

All eight sectors on the main index on the Canadian market wereup, led by financial sector with a rise of 0.8 percent. Royal Bankof Canada, the country's largest bank, rose 0.45 percent, to 58.61Canadian dollars per share after it reported a 22 percent jump infourth-quarter profit on rising fixed income trading revenue andsteady loan growth. Shares of other major banks also rose onoptimism about the strong performance in the last quarter in 2012.Some of them will report the quarterly results next week.

Some analysts are optimistic about the Toronto stock market'sperformance in the rest one-month time in 2012. They said thecombination of healthy Canadian bank earnings and some encouragingglobal economic data could help the Canadian stock market extendgains further into the end of the year.

Energy stocks finished higher as well and up 0.49 percent.Canadian Natural Resources rose 1.06 percent to 28.44 Canadiandollars per share and Suncor Energy climbed 0.37 percent to 32.85Canadian dollars per share.

In terms of stocks, Blackberry maker Research in Motion, whichsurged about 13 percent in early trading, was up 4.36 percent at11.48 Canadian dollars after Goldman Sachs upgraded the stockahead of the release of its BlackBerry 10 devices.

Shares of Air Canada were up 1.7 percent after Canada's biggestairline unveiled a major expansion in its flights to Asiaincluding China as it seeks to boost revenue.

On the economic front, figures released by Statistics Canadashowed the Raw Materials Price Index (RMPI) was unchanged inOctober. The decline in non-ferrous metals was offset by increasesin most commodities, particularly mineral fuels. The RMPI measuresprice changes for raw materials purchased by industries in Canadafor further processing.

In currency, the Canadian dollar ran down to trade at 1.0074 U.S. dollars at 5 p.m. local time (2200 GMT) on Thursday, comparedto 1.0077 U.S. dollar on Wednesday.