The survey, conducted by TNS Canadian Facts, shows their Consumer Confidence Index at 99.2, up 6% from July, when it was at 93.4.

The three subindexes that combine to track overall consumer confidence posted gains during the month, with the Expectations Index seeing the greatest shift: up 8.5 points to 111.1 from 102.6 in July.

The subindex tracks consumer sentiment for the economy, household income and employment in the next six months.

The Present Situation and Buy indexes also increased during the month.

“Consumer confidence has been trending upward since it fell to an all-time low last December,” Michael Antecol, director of the monthly study, said in a release Thursday.

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A Research In Motion BlackBerry Storm is pictured in New York. LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS

When it comes to recovery on the markets, few areas have posted as robust a rebound as the technology sector. Which leads to a rather obvious question: Is it too late for investors to jump in?

After all, it can be dangerous to get into a sector after it bounces some 50 per cent off its lows. Or at least, those were the old rules – rules that were written before one of the most spectacular market crashes in history.

The tech index on the S&P/TSX is up a resounding 36 per cent since the beginning of the year, and an even more impressive 52 per cent from its March 9 lows. With a gain of 37 per cent, only the financial services sector is up more in 2009.

“You’re not supposed to jump in after such a run, but counteracting that is the fact that we are not in the late stages of an economic cycle,” said Duncan Stewart, director of research and analysis at DSAM Consulting. “If we are indeed in a recovery, it’s still early. And technology tends to do well early in a recovery – always has, and probably always will.”

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Bank of Canada

Currency traders are betting that a U.S. recovery will spark a global recovery “and Canada will be the beneficiary of that,” Bank of Nova Scotia currency strategist Camilla Sutton said this week.

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The recession is over, but not the pain.

Canada’s central bank predicted Thursday that the economy would expand this quarter, suggesting the economic contraction lasted for about nine months, considerably shorter than the previous two recessions in the early 1990s and the early 1980s.

The Bank of Canada’s reassessment of the state of the economy is perhaps the clearest signal yet that the worst of the recession is over.

Buoyed by the prospect of better days ahead, investors rushed to buy Canadian stocks, adding new life to an near five-month rally that economists said has played a big role in reversing Canada’s fortunes.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index rose 243.33 points to 10,675.68, the highest in six weeks. Canada’s dollar jumped about 1 per cent to 92.04 U.S. cents, the strongest in almost two months.

Yet Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney stopped short of celebration, saying it will take more than a year to replace the wealth destroyed by the financial crisis.

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Canada’s economic recovery is likely to be far stronger than markets anticipate, a Bay Street economist forecast Wednesday, indicating that a “burst” of 10% growth is possible in the coming quarters.

The prediction from Sheryl King, chief economist and strategist at Merrill Lynch Canada, comes amid fierce debate over what shape the recovery will take following the deepest recession since the Second World War.

“Markets think we are going to get this gradual rise in growth, and then everything is going to be fine,” Ms. King said in an interview. “But business cycles never end like that. You usually get some pop in growth.”

Those who argue that a strong rebound, rather than a slow, weak recovery, is in the offing were handed a key piece of evidence Wednesday when major U.S. credit-card providers, led by American Express Co., reported defaults and delinquencies were less than expected in June. This may signal that U.S. consumers’ credit positions — up until now, the missing piece in the U.S. recovery puzzle — are not deteriorating as rapidly as feared, despite rising unemployment and the continuing housing slump.

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The Bank of Canada said on Tuesday that a recovery from the “intense” recession is in the early stages, and as a result it has revised upward its economic outlook for the next year and a half.

Further, in a sign that it believes credit conditions in capital markets have improved, the central bank announced it would make less liquidity available to market participants in special transactions.

In its latest scheduled rate announcement, the central bank, as widely expected, kept its key policy rate at a record low 0.25%, and reiterated its commitment to keep it there until end of June of 2010.

But it provided a slightly more upbeat take on the road ahead, roughly 48 hours before the release Thursday of its quarterly economic forecast – although cautioning that a recovery is “nascent.”

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Canadian business sentiment has soared as bosses across the country prepare for a pick-up in economic activity, sales and employment amid better credit conditions, according to two Bank of Canada surveys released Monday.

The results of the central bank’s Summer Business Outlook Survey are a dramatic change in mood from the Winter and Spring reports, with 61% of businesses expecting sales to rise in the coming 12 months — the highest reading since records began in 1998.

The expected rise is a welcome change for recession-weary companies, but it is important to note any increases will be off the back of a record drop in sales and, therefore, the outlook does not indicate a return to full health. As Douglas Porter, an economist at BMO Capital Markets, puts it: “[Sales] had nowhere to go but up.”

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Royal Bank of Canada has become the first of the country’s major banks to officially predict the recession will end in the third quarter as fiscal and monetary stimuli begin to heal the economy.

With housing resales up, manufacturing declines slowing and the third quarter just two weeks away, Canada can look forward to better times ahead, the bank said.

But despite the return to growth, Paul Ferley, the assistant chief economist at RBC Capital Markets, said it would take until next year for the recovery to gain full momentum and for consumers to cast aside their caution.

RBC said Monday the Canadian economy would emerge from three quarters of decline with a mild, but nevertheless positive, annualized growth rate of 0.8% in the third quarter followed by 2.4% in the fourth quarter. At the same time, it predicts the United States to end its four quarters of malaise with growth of 0.5% and 2.6%, respectively.

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Although Canada is showing signs of renewed economic life and better consumer confidence, Mr. Flaherty said “I worry about the slowness of the recovery in the U.S. I worry about the size of the U.S. deficit, which is approaching US$2-trillion this year.”

His comments came as the statement issued by the G8 finance ministers, meeting in the baroque city of Lecce in the heel of Italy, noted “signs of stabilization in our economies, including a recovery of stock markets, a decline of interest rate spreads, improved business and consumer confidence.”

But they warned that the “significant risks remain” and urged the G8 countries not to abandon their economic overhaul packages, such as stimulus spending, to secure the recovery.

The finance ministers of the world’s eight largest economies said they were generally more bullish about widespread recovery than they were even a few months ago, as stimulus spending kicks in, though they warned that unemployment could still climb because of the lag effect. “All of us believe we are right to confident, that we will get through the global recession,” Alistair Darling, the British chancellor, told reporters. “But we are right to be cautious…We are mindful that we live in an uncertain world.”

Mr. Flaherty said he fears that any failure to rein in the U.S. deficit could trigger a credit downgrade, which in turn would force interest rates up and delay both the American and Canadian recoveries. Earlier this month, Ireland received a fresh blow to its economy and its image when Standard & Poor’s cut the rating on the country’s sovereign debt for the second time in three months.

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