TSX Ends Marginally Up, Gains 1.05% In Week

(RTTNews) - Canadian stocks swung between gains and losses in a tight band in cautious trade on Friday before ending the day's session marginally up, with investors largely refraining from making significant moves as they continued to assess the likely move of the Federal Reserve next week.

The Fed, which is scheduled to announce its monetary policy next Wednesday, is widely expected to hold rates unchanged, but the central bank's accompanying statement is eyed for clues about the likely timing of interest rate cuts.

The benchmark S&P/TSX Composite Index, which moved between 21,079.90 and 21,142.31, ended the session with a gain of 23.74 points or 0.11% at 21,125.28. The index gained about 1.05% in the week.

Hut 8 Corp (HUT.TO) and Bitfarms (BITF.TO) soared 13.15% and 11.8%, respectively. Coveo Solutions (CVO.TO) climbed nearly 8%. Computer Modelling Group (CMG.TO), Lightspeed Commerce (LSPD.TO), Kinaxis Inc (KXS.TO), Copperleaf Technologies (CPLF.TO) and Shopify Inc (SHOP.TO) also ended notably higher.

Real estate stocks Interrent Real Estate (IIP.UN.TO) and First Capital REIT Units (FCR.UN.TO) gained 2% and 1.7%, respectively.

EQB Inc (EQB.TO), Cogeco Inc (CGO.TO), Cogeco Communications (CCA.TO) and Fairfax Financial Holdings (FFH.TO) advanced 2 to 3%. WSP Global (WSP.TO), Onex Corporation (ONEX.TO) and goeasy (GSY.TO) also ended with strong gains.

Boralex Inc (BLX.TO) ended lower by about 3.3%. Premium Brands Holdings (PBH.TO), Docebo Inc (DCBO.TO), George Weston (WN.TO), Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc (ATD.TO) and Cargojet (CJT.TO) drifted down by 1 to 1.7%.

On the economic front, data from Statistics Canada showed wholesales in Canada rose 0.8% month-on-month in December, after rising 0.9% in November, according to preliminary estimates.