Markets are sulking this morning after Federal Reserve Board chair Alan Greenspan warned yesterday that the slowdown may continue for the next few months, and first quarter U.S. GDP numbers were revised down sharply.

At midday, the TSE 300 is down 47 points to 8,300. Volume is rather robust ahead of the Memorial Day long weekend in the U.S., with 78.5 million shares changing hands.

Volume is about evenly split between buyers and sellers, but market breadth betrays the basic weakness, with losers holding a five to four edge over winners.

The decline this morning is broad-based. Everything is down except golds and financials. Golds are playing the safe haven today, and the financials are buoyed by Greenspan’s hint that rates still have room to drop further.

The weakest groups today are the conglomerates, miners and industrials. Nortel Networks is leading the techs down today, off more than 2% on 2 million shares, which is a light day for the networking giant. Ongoing speculation about, and apparent investor distaste for, a merger of rivals Alcatel and Lucent is casting a pall over networking stocks. Alcatel is down, too.

But tech stocks are generally holding up well otherwise. It’s the old economy stocks that are weak. Suncor Energy is down, as are North American Palladium, Homestake Canada, Methanex, Cameco, Ipsco, and Teck.

On the upside, Kinross is leading the golds higher, and Royal Bank is doing the honours among financials. Other gainers include Placer Dome, 724 Solutions, Petro Canada, Creo Products, Molson, and SNC Lavalin.

A big winner today is Northern Financial. After announcing a deal to acquire a small online broker, it is up 2.5¢ to 11¢ on more than 2 million shares. That’s a 29% move to the upside.

On Wall Street, markets have been pretty cranky, with the glum economic outlook sparking selling. The Dow Jones industrial average is threatening to fall below the 11,000 level again, down 89 points to 11,034. The Nasdaq composite is off 26 points to 2,256. The S&P 500 has dropped 12 points to 1,281.

The CDNX is bucking the trend today, trading up nine ticks to 3,296. Volume is just average at 18 million shares. Techs are driving the gains, with mines down and oils flat. Global Tree Techologies is leading the trade, down 9% to 10¢ on 1.3 million shares.