By Robb M. Stewart


Stocks in Toronto were higher Wednesday, echoing modest advances on Wall Street.

At midday, the Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX Composite Index was up 0.3% at 21857.25 as the technology and finance sectors led broad gains. The blue-chip S&P/TSX 60 was ahead 0.3% at 1305.16.

The large Canadian banks were mixed, with National Bank of Canada leading gainers with a rise of 0.7% but Bank of Montreal falling 1.6%.

Buoyed by a higher gold price, miners of the precious metal were higher. Barrick Gold advanced 0.6% to C$23.16, Agnico Eagle was 1.2% higher at C$90.66 and B2Gold gained 1.9% to C$3.68.


Other market movers:

BlackBerry's shares rallied 13% to C$3.44 after the Canadian cybersecurity company logged a narrower-than-expected quarterly loss and flagged progress on its efforts to swing to a profit and generate positive cash flows.

MDA Space jumped 11% to C$13.33 after the Canadian Space Agency handed the company a 999.8 million Canadian dollars (US$729.6 million) contract to continue working on the next-generation Canadarm that will be housed on a small exploration outpost orbiting the moon.

Hut 8 rose 2.6% to C$21.53 ahead of the bitcoin miner's inclusion from July in the Russell 3000 index of big U.S.-listed stocks, a move than can raise a company's profile with investors.


Write to Robb M. Stewart at robb.stewart@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

06-27-24 1228ET