By Fergal Smith
(Reuters) - Canada's main stock index fell on Wednesday as Shopify's downbeat forecast for revenue growth hammered technology shares and investors took stock of recent gains for the market that had taken it within striking distance of a record high.
The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index ended down 31.46 points, or 0.1%, at 22,259.16. It had closed higher in the previous five sessions on rising optimism that the Federal Reserve's next move would be to cut interest rates.
"It is just some rebalancing after the move higher over the last few days," said Elvis Picardo, portfolio manager at Luft Financial, iA Private Wealth.
"Big picture, you are seeing individual stocks very much impacted by their earnings numbers. The bar's been set fairly high so for companies to beat you need to not just provide good numbers, you also have to give a rosy outlook."
The information technology sector dropped 4.2%, pulled down by an 18.5% decline in the shares of Shopify Inc after the e-commerce company forecast its slowest quarterly revenue growth in two years.
It was the biggest percentage decline for Shopify since going public in May 2015.
Most other sectors ended higher, with heavily-weighted financials rising 0.9% and energy adding 0.5%. The price of oil settled up 0.8% at $78.99 a barrel after U.S. oil storage data showed a larger-than-expected draw in crude stockpiles.
Stella-Jones Inc was one of the top performers. Its shares climbed 10.9% after the forestry firm reported first-quarter results that beat analysts' estimates.
(Reporting by Fergal Smith in Toronto and Purvi Agarwal in Bengaluru; Editing by Ravi Prakash Kumar and Deepa Babington)
