Black gold is diminishing, with oil slipping deeper into bear market territory.
Output from key producers, trade concerns, and dwindling demand has caused crude prices to fall below $60 a barrel.
Oil lost 84 cents, dropping to $59.83 US a barrel. A 10th straight day of declines marks oil’s longest losing streak since 1984.
Oil is one of Canada’s biggest exports and as it goes, so goes the TSX’s influential energy sector which lost 1.6 percent today.
Overall, Canada’s stock exchange was 83 points lower with seven of 11 sectors in the red.
Canada’s heavily traded pot stocks also dragged the index, with Aurora Cannabis and Canopy Growth losing between 5.8 and eight percent, respectively.
In New York, the Dow was off by 201 points as investors digest potential rate hikes and how declining oil prices could be an indicator of the health of the global economy.
A 3.4 drop in industrial bellwether Caterpillar and a 5.7 slip in General Electric shares led the losses on Wall Street.
A slump in Chinese auto sales also cooled investor sentiment, and had a domino effect on General Motors, which fell 2.3 percent.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq also fell, losing 123 points with market movers Apple, Netflix, Intel, and Facebook in the red.
The greenback strengthened, pulling down gold and the loonie.
Gold plunged, down $15.00 to $1,209 an ounce while the loonie was off by nearly a quarter of a cent, losing 24/100ths of a cent to $0.7577 US.
