* TSX ends up 0.9% at 22,045.71
* Moves closer to March 2022 record high
* Technology rallies 2%; Shopify adds 4.3%
* Materials group rallies 2.4%
March 20 (Reuters) - Canada's main stock index moved closer to a record high on Wednesday, led by gains for technology and metal mining shares, as the U.S. Federal Reserve stuck with its projection for interest rate cuts this year.
The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index ended up 185.13 points, or 0.9%, at 22,045.71, stopping just short of the record closing high it posted in March 2022 at 22,087.22.
Wall Street's main stock indexes also rallied after the Fed eased investor jitters by keeping borrowing costs unchanged and reinforcing expectations that rates could be cut by three-quarters of a percentage point by the end of 2024.
"Economic resiliency and inflation stubbornness are chipping away at the Fed's appetite for easing, but not enough to derail rate cuts later this year," Michael Gregory, deputy chief economist at BMO Capital Markets, said in a note.
The Bank of Canada is also expected to ease rates in 2024. Policymakers agreed this month that conditions for rate cuts should materialize this year if the economy evolved as forecast, a document published on Wednesday showed.
The Toronto market's technology sector rose 2%, helped by a gain of 4.3% for e-commerce company Shopify Inc, while the materials group, which includes precious and base metals miners and fertilizer companies, was up 2.4% as gold and copper prices climbed.
Heavily weighted financials added 0.7% but energy was a drag, falling 0.2%, as the price of oil gave back some recent gains, settling 2.1% lower at $81.68 a barrel. (Reporting by Fergal Smith in Toronto and Shubham Batra and Bansari Mayur Kamdar in Bengaluru; Editing by Vijay Kishore and Josie Kao)
