Trading Summary (March 17, 2004)

On Wednesday, the Toronto equity market picked up the rally where it had left off the day before, as the TSX Composite index rose 98.45 points to 8,601.71, a gain of 1.2%. The gain over the last two days effectively wiped out the loss the markets suffered on Monday.

Every sector except the industrials moved up on Wednesday, with the health care stocks in the lead. But both the golds and the base metals outpaced the broader market, the TSX Gold index tacking on 3.69 to finish at 216.18 points and the TSX Metals and Mining index pulling up 3.25 to finish at 218.19.

The gains in the golds were broad-based. Among the big miners Kinross Gold was the winner, adding 20 to close at $9 on a volume of 4.2 million shares. Glamis Gold was the best of the mid-tiers, picking up 97 for a close of $22.30, and silver producer Wheaton River Minerals, which rose 8 to $4, was the leader among the smaller producers. It was also the most actively traded of the golds, at 4.9 million shares.

Over on the base-metal side, Inco finished $1.97 higher at $47.02 on a volume of 2 million shares, while Teck Cominco, up 40 at $23.55, nearly recovered its Monday losses.

The star performer on the index, though, was Ivanhoe Mines, which was up 63 to $7. It had favourable recommendations about its Oyu Tolgoi copper project in Mongolia from both UBS Warburg and GMP Securities, whose base-metal analyst Larry Strauss had been one of Oyu Tolgoi’s more severe critics when early economic studies were released last month.