By James Langton

(March 17 – 13:00 ET) – Traders appear to have found their pot of gold on the TSE this morning. The TSE 300 is the hottest market in North America at midday, up 210 points to 9,698 on volume of 116 million shares. Volume is more than 2:1 in favour of buyers and advancers are outpacing decliners 3:2.

Traders are shrugging off a higher than expected U.S. Consumer Price Index today, as they did with yesterday’s Producer Price Index. The focus now turns to next Tuesday’s meeting of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, which is expected to generate at least a 25-basis-point rate hike. The Bank of Canada is expected to follow suit.

For today, though, stocks are raging higher. The TSE’s 14 groups are split evenly between winners and losers, although huge gains in the industrials and utilities are driving the market. Paper and pipeline stocks are up too.

Within the industrials, technology is up 5.4%. Other strong groups include insurers, wholesalers and tobacco. Even software is bouncing back today. The technology story is being dominated by Nortel Networks. The firm’s stock is up 7.7% on huge volume of 3. million shares. An S&P 500 rebalancing at the end of the day today will see Nortel upped and that’s helping push its trading activity. Nortel is dragging BCE along for the ride too, and the pair are pushing markets higher. BCE Emergis, Certicom and JDS UNiphase are moving upward as well.

TransCanada Pipelines is leading trading up for the pipelines. Fairfax has added another 12% on behalf of the insurers. Among the banks, TD is the hottest trader, although Scotia is trading heavily too.

Miners are the weakest TSE group, pulling back 2.5% from yesterday’s gains. Integrated miners, transports and biotech are leading the losers. Research in Motion is down again today, joined by BCT.Telus and Descartes Systems. Biotech weakness includes Angiotech Pharmaceuticals, QLT Phototherapeutics and NPS Allelix.

Despite the weakness in transports, Laidlaw continues to fight back, up 12% at midday on characteristically huge volume of 9.8 million shares.

The CDNX is joining the rally wholeheartedly today. The index is up 82 points to 4,434. Volume is light at 47.7 million shares. Technology is strong, up 1.8%, but it’s the energy stocks that are really driving the market higher, up 3.5%. Price Manufacturing Inc. is the heaviest trader, at 2.8 million shares, up 86% to 13¢.

In New York, stocks have been higher all morning, but at midday are selling off. The Dow has given up earlier gains, now down six points to 10,624. Nasdaq is up 49 points, off earlier highs, to 4,766. The S&P has added 13 points to 1,471.