Toronto stocks flat ahead of Nvidia quarterly results

By Nikhil Sharma

(Reuters) -Canada's main stock index was slightly down on Wednesday as gains in financial stocks from upbeat domestic lender earnings were countered by losses in mining shares, with investors focused on Nvidia's quarterly results.

At 10:15 a.m. ET (14:15 GMT), the Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index was down 23.92 points, or 0.05%, at 23,236.04.

Investors are closely watching the quarterly earnings of chipmaker Nvidia due later today, as the AI darling is widely expected to deliver blockbuster results; however, even a slight miss could impact other megacaps and semiconductor stocks.

Among domestic earnings, shares of the Royal Bank of Canada rose 2.6% after the country's biggest lender's quarterly profit beat estimates as it set aside smaller-than-expected funds for bad loans.

Separately, the National Bank of Canada's rose 5% after it reported a bigger third-quarter profit.

"The big focus on all of the banks reporting right now is how much are they providing provisions for credit losses going forward," said Michael Sprung, president at Sprung Investment Management.

Banking stocks propped up the financials sector, which has a 29% weighting on the domestic index, logging 0.6% gains.

It was joined by capped communications and consumer staples sectors that gained 0.4% and 0.3%, respectively.

Leading the sectoral losses was the materials sector that declined 1.8%, as gold prices fell against a stronger dollar, while copper prices also slipped. [GOL/] [MET/L]

The information technology sector dropped 0.8%, pulled down by a 12% fall in Canadian software firm Kinaxis, after it announced its CEO, John Sicard, will retire from his role.

Going ahead, the U.S. Personal Consumption Expenditure report due on Friday, could give investors more clues on the pace and magnitude of imminent rate cuts.

The odds of 25-basis-point rate cut in the September policy meeting by the U.S. central bank stand at 65.5%, while the odds for the hefty 50 bps cut are at 34.5%.

(Reporting by Nikhil Sharma in Bengaluru; Editing by Vijay Kishore)