Canadian stock market weighed down by fiscal cliff fears

TORONTO, Nov. 27 (Xinhua) -- The Canadian stock market fell on Tuesday as uncertainty surrounding negotiations aimed at driving the U.S. economy away from a fiscal crisis at the end of this year outweighed the positive impact of international lenders' agreement on a Greek debt deal.

The benchmark S&P/TSX Composite index closed down 73.42 points, or 0.60 percent, to 12,111.63 while S&P/TSX Venture Composite index dropped 19.25 points, or 1.60 percent, to 1,206.17.

After 12 hours of talks at a third meeting in as many weeks, Greece's international lenders agreed on a package of measures to reduce the country's debt by 40 billion euros early Tuesday. The traders soon digest the impact of the Greek debt-reduction deal and the initial optimism quickly gave way to worries about the lack of detail in the plan, hurting the euro.

Meanwhile, the U.S. fiscal cliff woes continue to weigh on the market. Now the Congress is back in session after the Thanksgiving break, lawmakers are under pressure to reach a deal with the White House before the end of the year in order to avoid falling over the fiscal cliff.

The dual concerns weighed on oil and gold prices and shares of some of Canada's biggest resource companies were pushed lower. Miner Goldcorp Inc was the biggest drag on the index, falling 4.5 percent to 38.95 Canadian dollars per share. Oil company Suncor Energy lost 1.3 percent to 32.89 Canadian dollars per share and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd shed 1.6 percent to 27.92 Canadian dollars per share.

Blackberry maker Research in Motion (RIM) also weighed on the Canadian stock market as its shares moved down over 10 percent, 10. 70 Canadian dollars apiece, after soaring more than 25 percent last week on optimism over its upcoming new devices. A recent report showed Tuesday that the BlackBerry's share of U.S. sales tumbled 6.9 percentage points to 1.6 percent over the three months to the same period a year ago.

On the upside, Canadian transport giant Bombardier announced to sign a 7.8-billion-U.S. dollar deal to supply business jets to a private Swiss charter operator. Its shares jumped 8 percent to 3. 37 Canadian dollars apiece, offsetting some of the market's weakness.

In currency, the Canadian dollar declined to trade at 1.0059 U. S. dollars at 5 p.m. local time (2200 GMT) on Tuesday, compared with 1.0072 U.S. dollars on Monday.

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