Canadian investors are looking to put the first quarter in the rearview mirror, after the TSX Composite staggered to a more than six per cent decline in the first quarter of 2018. The benchmark composite ended the first quarter as the 77th-best performer among its 93 global peers, lagging Australia’s benchmark ASX 200 but ahead Hungary’s Budapest exchange.

Worst performing stocks:

Element Fleet Management (EFN.TO): -56.32 per cent

Corus Entertainment (CJRb.TO): -48.29 per cent

Eldorado Gold (ELD.TO): -40.66 per cent

Pretium Resources (PVG.TO): -40.31 per cent

Aphria (APH.TO): -38.56 per cent

Element Fleet Management plunged more than 24 per cent on two occasions less than five weeks apart as the nation’s largest publicly-traded trucking fleet manager’s recovery plan failed to gain traction. The company was hit by a trio of analyst downgrades in early February after it disclosed it lost a significant unnamed customer at the end of last year. Former Chief Executive Officer Brad Nullmeyer also abruptly retired, leaving Dan Jauernig as acting CEO. The second hit came after Element Fleet announced it would take a restructuring charge in the first quarter of this year.

Shares of Corus Entertainment are trading at an all-time low, continuing their long slide after the media and entertainment company’s first quarter results came up short of expectations. The company has struggled to reignite its television division, where profit fell nine per cent year-over-year in the first quarter as advertising revenues declined. The disappointing showing came less than two years after Corus completed its blockbuster $2.65-billion acquisition of Shaw’s media assets.

It’s been a nightmarish stretch for investors in Eldorado Gold. The miner extended its brutal 2017 showing through the beginning of this year, shedding another 40 per cent of its value. The company’s significant issues in Greece and Turkey have rattled investor nerves, as a permitting fight with the Greek government and production issues at Eldorado’s key Kisladag mine in Turkey continue to weigh on output.

Worst performing sectors:

Health care: -13.47 per cent

Energy: -10.37 per cent

Telecom: -7.76 per cent

The health care sector has found itself underwater in 2018, a quick reversal after being the top performing subgroup on the index last year. Weakness in shares of cannabis company Aphria and a pair of traditional pharmaceutical companies in ProMetic Life Sciences and Valeant Pharmaceuticals account for the bulk of the losses. In spite of the poor performance, the health care sector has little influence on the overall index, accounting for a mere one per cent of the TSX.

The far more influential energy subgroup can’t seem to shake itself out of the doldrums, with the losses through the first quarter eclipsing the 10.2 per cent loss it booked in all of last year. While uranium explorer NexGen Energy is the worst performer year-to-date among the group, natural gas plays Advantage Oil & Gas and Peyto Exploration are also finding themselves under significant pressure.

Canada’s telecom sector rounds out the bottom three, falling about eight per cent. All three constituents of the group – Telus, BCE and Rogers – are down on a year-to-date basis, in spite of broadly strong fourth quarter earnings results. Much like the utilities group, interest rate hikes from the Bank of Canada are often a drag on traditional yield stocks like the telecoms.  

Top performing sectors:

Info tech: +10.07 per cent

Real estate: -0.67 per cent

Industrials: -2.99 per cent

Only one of the eleven subgroups on the TSX has managed to make gains over the course of 2018, with the info tech sector rising more than eight per cent. The relatively small subgroup’s fate is largely determined by only a trio of companies, with CGI Group, Constellation Software and Shopify accounting for more than 60 per cent of the sector’s overall weighting. Real estate and industrials round out the top three, albeit capping off the quarter in negative territory.

Top performing stocks:

Shopify (SHOP.TO): +26.13 per cent

Bombardier (BBDb.TO): +23.76 per cent

Stars Group (TSGI.TO): +21.57 per cent

Pure Industrial REIT (AAR-u.TO): +18.76 per cent

Canfor Corp. (CFP.TO): +18.44 per cent

Another volley from short-seller Andrew Left wasn't enough to knock Shopify out of top spot. Canada’s latest tech darling has extended last year’s run, rising more than 20 per cent as revenue growth shows no signs of a pronounced slowdown as of yet. The company, which provides e-commerce software to businesses, has been fending off Left’s myriad unproven allegations, the latest of which claim Shopify is unduly reliant on data from Facebook.

Canada’s premier plane and train maker has found itself on firmer footing so far this year, headlining a disparate group of top gainers. Shares of Bombardier got a boost when it posted a narrower loss in the fourth quarter and a strong increase in free cash flow. The company is putting the protracted trade spat with Boeing behind it after the U.S. International Trade Commission ruled its CSeries jet wasn’t harming the larger planemaker.

The company formerly known as Amaya Gaming shrugged off a fourth quarter profit miss to snag third spot in the final day of trading in the first quarter. Outside the modest miss on the bottom line, The Stars Group is coming off three quarters of profit coming in at the top side of average analyst expectations. Earlier this year, the online gambling site hiked its stake in Australia’s CrownBet Holdings in a deal made in conjunction with an agreement to buy up William Hill’s Aussie unit.  

Honourable mention:

Pure Industrial REIT rounds out the top three, after announcing plans to sell itself to an affiliate of Blackstone Property Partners in a deal worth $3.8 billion, including debt. Pure Industrial unitholders voted overwhelmingly in favour of the deal, which represented a more than 20 per cent premium over the REIT’s unaffected share price before the Jan. 9 deal announcement.