Canadian stocks fluctuated modestly in cautious trading on Friday and concluded the day with marginal gains. Investors mostly held back on making substantial moves as they continued to anticipate the Federal Reserve's impending decision set for next week.
The Fed's announcement on its monetary policy is due next Wednesday. There is a widespread prediction that they will retain current rates. However, speculators are keen on gleaning insights from the bank's statement on prospective timing for interest rate reductions.
The primary S&P/TSX Composite Index, having oscillated between 21,079.90 and 21,142.31 during the day, ended the session up by 23.74 points or 0.11% at 21,125.28. The index experienced a roughly 1.05% increase over the week.
Hut 8 Corp (HUT.TO) and Bitfarms (BITF.TO) surged by 13.15% and 11.8%, respectively. Other companies such as Coveo Solutions (CVO.TO) saw a nearly 8% rise, while Computer Modelling Group (CMG.TO), Lightspeed Commerce (LSPD.TO), Kinaxis Inc (KXS.TO), Copperleaf Technologies (CPLF.TO) and Shopify Inc (SHOP.TO) also achieved substantial improvements.
Real estate companies Interrent Real Estate (IIP.UN.TO) and First Capital REIT Units (FCR.UN.TO) managed to accrue 2% and 1.7% gains, respectively.
Several other stocks, including EQB Inc (EQB.TO), Cogeco Inc (CGO.TO), Cogeco Communications (CCA.TO), and Fairfax Financial Holdings (FFH.TO) progressed by 2 to 3%. WSP Global (WSP.TO), Onex Corporation (ONEX.TO) and goeasy (GSY.TO) concluded the session with significant gains too.
Meanwhile, Boralex Inc (BLX.TO) suffered a loss of around 3.3%. Other stocks like Premium Brands Holdings (PBH.TO), Docebo Inc (DCBO.TO), George Weston (WN.TO), Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc (ATD.TO) and Cargojet (CJT.TO) witnessed a decrease by 1 to 1.7%.
On the subject of economic trends, data from Statistics Canada stated that Canadian wholesale trading increased by 0.8% on a monthly basis in December, succeeding a 0.9% rise in November, as indicated by preliminary estimates.
