Today on Stockhouse
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Martin Hutchinson lists some of the many reasons to invest in Canada, and many of those reasons are under the ground.
And in the latest Got Gold report, Gene Arensberg reported on the gains by U.S. blue chips and Canadian small-cap mining stocks.
Top Bullboards post: On the Vast Exploration (TSX: V.VST, Stock Forum), SwissTime noted: “Yea, it seems all the Kurdistan plays are getting high volumes today.
“It may be for different reasons but at least these stocks are headed
in the right direction, up.
“Is it possibly that maybe the Iraqi election results are finally being
analysed as a positive?”
Top Bullboard:Vast Exploration (TSX: V.VST, Stock Forum) crept into the top three Bullboards Wednesday as investors piled into Kurdistan-area oil plays.
Top blog:Magnum reported on winning strategies for tax free savings accounts (TSFAs) in the “A Canary in the Coal Mine” blog.
For news about small stocks that made big moves in Wednesday’s trading, please read the Stockhouse Canadian Small and Micro-cap Stock Report.
Word on Wall Street
“The news on U.S. inflation is positive as it adds up to the Fed yesterday reiterating that it’s going to keep rates low for an extended period of time,” said James Dunigan, chief investment officer at PNC Wealth Management in Philadelphia, in an interview with Bloomberg. “The recovery is in place and by all evidence looks to be sustainable and at the end of the rainbow, that all filters down to corporate profits.”
| Selected expected U.S. earnings releases for Thursday |
| (Consensus Estimates vs. Last Year) |
|
| BPZ Resources (NYSE: BPZ) |
Q4 |
-$0.02 vs. -$0.08 |
|
| FedEx (NYSE: FDX) |
Q3 |
$0.72 vs. $0.31 |
|
| Gamestop Corp (NYSE: GME) |
Q4 |
$1.28 vs. $1.34 |
|
| Palm (NASDAQ: PALM) |
Q3 |
-$0.42 vs. -$0.86 |
|
| Ross Stores (NASDAQ: ROST) |
Q4 |
$1.16 vs. $0.76 |
|
| Taseko Mines (AMEX: TGB) |
Q4 |
N/A vs. N/A |
| Selected expected Canadian earnings releases for Thursday |
| (Consensus Estimates vs. Last Year) |
|
| El Dorado Gold (TSX: T.ELD) |
Q4 |
US$0.09 vs. US$0.28 |
|
| MacDonald Dettwiler (TSX: T.MDA) |
Q4 |
$0.70 vs. $0.22 |
Today In The Markets
Stocks continue higher
|
| DJIA |
10,733.67 |
+47.69 |
 |
|
| NASDAQ |
2,389.09 |
+11.08 |
|
|
| S&P500 |
1,166.21 |
+6.75 |
|
|
| S&P/TSX |
12,100.66 |
+11.26 |
|
|
| S&P/TSX Venture |
1,577.78 |
-0.75 |
 |
|
Toronto & New York (The Canadian Press) - The U.S. Federal Reserve's reassurance that interest rates will stay low for a good while yet pushed the Toronto stock market higher for a second day.
The S&P/TSX composite index gained 18.1 points to 12,107.5 with most sectors positive.
The rise added to an 81-point runup on Tuesday after the U.S. Federal Reserve kept a key lending rate at a historically low level of zero to 0.25 per cent. The central bank added that it will keep rates unchanged "for an extended period."
New York markets ran ahead as a report on inflation at the wholesale level provided further assurance that the Federal Reserve shouldn't have to raise rates any time soon.
The U.S. Labour Department said that prices at the wholesale level plunged in February by 0.6 per cent, the largest amount in seven months as a big drop in energy prices offset higher food costs. That was much larger than the 0.2 per cent decline economists had expected.
The Dow Jones industrial average gained 70.7 points to 10,756.7.
The Nasdaq composite index climbed 18.95 points to 2,396.96 while the S&P 500 index was 9.1 points higher to 1,168.55.
Please click here for the complete U.S. and Canadian market summaries.
After-Hours News
Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS, Stock Forum)
The credit card company said that it lost $104 million in its latest financial quarter. On a per share basis, the company lost $122 million or 22 cents per share, down from its year ago net loss of $196 million or 41 cents per share. As well, the company said it had received regulatory approval to redeem the $1.2 billion of preferred stock that it issued to the U.S. Treasury on the TARP Capital Purchase program.
Novus Gold (TSX: V.NOV, Stock Forum)
The company announced that it had engaged Canaccord Financial to assist it with the sale and distribution of up to 7.5 million flow-through shares at a price of 40 cents each. The terms of an earlier private placement announcement by the company have been superseded by these new arrangements. Previously Novus gold planned to offer up to 10 million flow through shares at 40 cents per unit, with each unit consisting of one non flow through share and one half of one warrant. The warrant would entitle the bearer to buy a additional non flow through share for 60 cents for a period of two years.