Bay Street Likely To Inch Higher In Cautious Trade

(RTTNews) - Canadian shares are likely to open higher on Monday, tracking firm crude oil prices and steady European markets. With the Bank of Canada's monetary policy announcement due on Wednesday, the mood is likely to remain a bit cautious.

The Bank of Canada is widely expected to keep its interest rate unchanged as inflation remains at elevated level. Canada's inflation accelerated to 3.4% in December, from 3.1% a month earlier.

CGI Inc. (GIB-A.TO) announced Monday a partnership with Korber to enable pharmaceutical and life sciences companies to improve production processes by combining CGI's end-to-end services with Korber's Werum PAS-X Manufacturing Execution System (MES) Suite.

Endeavour Mining (EDV.TO) announced that it produced 280,000 ounces of gold in the fourth quarter, down from 294,000 ounces in the year-ago quarter. For the full year 2023, Endeavour posted gold production of 1.07 million ounces, an 8% decrease from 1.16 million ounces in 2022.

Endeavour Mining expects gold production to increase by up to 18% in the full year 2024 to 1.13 million-1.27 million ounces due to project startups in the second quarter.

The Canadian market ended with a gain of 149.79 points or 0.7% at 20,906.52, climbing further off the nearly one-month closing low set on Wednesday.

Optimism about the outlook for earnings may have contributed to the strength in the tech sector ahead of next week's release of quarterly results from companies like Intel (INTC), IBM Corp. (IBM) and Netflix (NFLX).

Asian stocks ended mixed on Monday as concerns over China's faltering economy offset dovish BOJ bets.

European stocks are up in positive territory with investors digesting earnings updates, and looking ahead to the European Central Bank's monetary policy decision on Thursday.

In commodities, West Texas Intermediate Crude oil futures are up $0.40 or 0.54% at $73.81 a barrel.

Gold futures are down $1.20 or 0.06% at $2,028.10 an ounce, while Silver futures are down $0.391 or 1.72% at $22.320 an ounce.