Canada's main stock market, the Toronto Stock Exchange, recovered more than 40 points over the last hour of Friday's session, but still ended the day down about 437 points or 2%, taking overall losses for three successive days to 650 points amid lower commodity prices, a sell off in tech stocks and concerns about the coming higher interest rates cycle.
This comes a day after Bloomberg News cited Jeremy Grantham, the investor who for decades has been calling market bubbles, as saying the historic collapse in stocks he predicted a year ago is underway and even intervention by the Federal Reserve can't prevent an eventual plunge of almost 50%
Among heavyweight sectors, Energy was down 2.6%, Materials down 2.5% and Financials down 1.2%
And among tech stocks, Shopify was down 13% amid reports that it is preparing to cut its fulfillment network capacity by as much as half from current levels.
Of commodities today, gold traded lower on Friday despite a weak dollar and rising bond prices, though its remains near a two-month high ahead of next week's meeting of the Federal Reserve's policy-setting committee. Gold for February delivery was last seen down $10.80 to US$1,831.80 per ounce.
And West Texas Intermediate crude for March delivery closed down $0.41 to US$885.14 per barrel, Marketwatch reported. March Brent crude, the global benchmark, was last seen down $0.54 to US$87.84, while Western Canada Select was $0.33 lower to US$71.26 per barrel.