Updates at market close
TSX ends up 1% at 30,471.68
Eclipses Thursday's record closing high
Shopify jumps 6.5%; posts record intraday and closing highs
For the week, the index adds 2.4%
By Fergal Smith
Oct 3 (Reuters) - Canada's main stock index rose to another record high on Friday as shares of e-commerce company Shopify SHOP.TO jumped and investors shrugged off downbeat domestic economic data.
Toronto's S&P/TSX composite index .GSPTSE ended up 311.09 points, or 1%, at 30,471.68, its sixth straight day of gains and eclipsing Thursday's record closing high.
For the week, the index was up 2.4%.
"From a big picture point of view, we seem to be back to a situation where bad news for the economy is good for the markets," said Elvis Picardo, a portfolio manager at Luft Financial, iA Private Wealth. "On the Canadian side, we had pretty soft data but that was shrugged aside."
Canada's services economy contracted at a steeper pace in September as businesses shed jobs and outstanding work sank to a five-year low, S&P Global's Canada services PMI data showed.
A soft economy spurred the Bank of Canada to cut interest rates last month to a three-year low of 2.50%. Money market pricing has leaned toward further easing this month. 0#CADIRPR
The technology sector .SPTTTK rose 1.5%. Shopify's shares were up 6.5%, notching an all-time closing high. They also surpassed the record intraday peak from November 2021.
"Shopify could be benefiting from enthusiasm for anything AI-related," Picardo said. "We don’t have too many companies with that pedigree in Canada."
OpenAI has recently introduced a feature that would allow users to make purchases through ChatGPT, in partnership with Shopify and Etsy ETSY.O.
Technology accounts for 11.5% of the TSX's weighting, far less than the U.S. benchmark S&P 500 where technology represents 50% of the index.
Industrials added 1.1% and energy was up 1%. The price of oil CLc1 settled 0.7% higher at $60.88 a barrel, clawing back some of this week's decline. Eight OPEC+ countries are likely to further raise oil output on Sunday.
Nine of 10 major sectors ended higher. The exception was healthcare, which lost 1%.
(Reporting by Fergal Smith in Toronto and Sanchayaita Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo and Lisa Shumaker)
((fergal.smith@thomsonreuters.com; +1 647 480 7446))