The TSX's worst performing sectors have included energy, down nearly 3 per cent, as investors fretted about slow progress toward building additional pipeline capacity, and healthcare, which has fallen more than 13 per cent because of a plunge in once high-flying cannabis shares.
But prospects for pot stocks could be improving as a result of the potential for Ontario, Canada's largest province, to accelerate its roll-out of retail cannabis distribution and for the United States to take steps toward the weed's federal legalization, said Robert McWhirter, a portfolio manager at Selective Asset Management Inc.
Last week, a U.S. congressional committee passed legislation to decriminalize cannabis, taking it a step closer to being approved by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.
The pot stocks have given technical buy signals and could be "reasonable performers into 2020," McWhirter said.