TSX rises on banks and oil, but Agrium dives

TORONTO (Reuters) - The main Canadian stock index was higher on Friday on rises in heavyweight energy and financial stocks as oil prices rallied, and it looked on track for a slight gain on the week despite sharp mid-week falls.

"We may be reinitiating the uptrend," said Douglas Davis, chief executive at Davis-Rea. "Possibly it's just a bounceback after two bad days, but it doesn't look like that."

He said Canadian banks rode broadly positive sentiment for equities higher ahead of the start of their quarterly earnings season next week.

The energy sector also gained as the price of oil rebounded after two days of heavy losses.

Davis said the beaten-down oil and gas sector might win back favor as problems getting Canadian oil to market dissipate with increased rail volume and the likelihood of a U.S. government green light for Keystone XL pipeline project to carry crude from the Alberta oil sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

"If Keystone stumbles, we stumble...but I would bet on it going through," he said.

At 10:40 a.m. (1540 GMT) the Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> was up 59.80 points, or 0.47 percent, at 12,699.77.

The gains echoed moves in U.S. and European markets, although Canadian miners bucked the trend, with heavy selling in fertilizer companies in particular. <.n><.eu/>

Fertilizer producer Agrium Inc was the heaviest weight on the index, down 4.9 percent at C$103.48.

Agrium reported record high fourth-quarter profit after normal trading hours on Thursday but was hurt by an analyst downgrade of many of the leading names in the fertilizer sector, including Potash Corp , which slipped 0.9 percent to C$39.99.

The market appeared to brush off data that showed the Canadian economy registered its lowest inflation in more than three years in January and its largest drop in retail sales in almost three years in December.

($1=$1.02 Canadian)

(Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by James Dalgleish; and Peter Galloway)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/tsx-may-open-higher-positive-german-business-data-132954578--sector.html

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