Toronto market's winning streak ends as tech slides

By Fergal Smith

(Reuters) - Canada's main stock index fell on Wednesday after five straight days of gains as technology and material stocks fell, although a rebound in oil prices boosted heavyweight energy shares and capped overall losses.

The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index ended down 88.53 points, or 0.4%, at 20,181.44 after notching its highest closing level in more than two months the day before.

The index has rallied about 11% from its July trough.

"There's a lot of short covering that's happening which has caused the market to rally quite substantially off of the lows," said James Telfser, Managing Partner and Portfolio Manager at Aventine Investment Counsel.

"I am sure they will pause as we try to digest more data as it comes to us."

U.S. stocks also closed down and bond yields climbed as investors weighed minutes from the Federal Reserve's latest policy meeting. The central bank is expected to raise interest rates further in September.

The technology sector, which tends to be sensitive to higher bond yields, lost 1.7%, while the materials sector, which includes precious and base metals miners, lost 1.8%.

Shares of Lundin Mining Corp dropped 5.6% as Chile issued a series of measures against a copper mine owned by the company, after a sinkhole opened up near one of the mines.

The energy sector, which accounts for 18% of the TSX's market capitalization, added 0.3% as oil rebounded from a six-month low.

U.S. crude oil futures settled 1.8% higher at $88.11 a barrel.

(Reporting by Fergal Smith; Additional reporting by Aniruddha Ghosh in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel, Krishna Chandra Eluri and Deepa Babington)