By Jeff Sanford

(November 13 – 17:30 ET) – Toronto stocks recovered slightly this afternoon. After nose-diving this morning, the TSE 300 finished the day off 83.96 points at 9,115.10. It had traded as low as 8,959.27 in intra-day trading.

The decline came on the back of the pharmaceuticals and financials. Tech stocks recovered somewhat from this morning’s selloff, initiated by disappointing earnings from Hewlett-Packard.

In fact the industrial products sector moved against the wider market and finished up just slightly. Industrial products and the oil sector were the only two sub-sectors to finish higher today, though; each was up less than 1%.

Leading on the downside were utilities, real estate, financial services and communications — all down over 1%. The biggest drop happened in consumer products, which was down 3.12%.

Within the consumer products sector, QLT Inc, a major component of the sector, was down $2 to $72, a drop of 2.70%. Also down was BioChem Pharma, off $1.85 to $32.25, a loss of 4.99%.

The financials provided the rest of the downward pressure on the TSE toady. There was a broad selloff in the high-flying sector. Stock in National Bank plunged 3.92% to close at $23.30, Royal Bank plunged 1.99% to close at $46.90 and Bank of Nova Scotia dropped 3.15% to close at $43.05.

CIBC took a big hit dropping 3.48% to close at $45.75. TD finished the day down 2.77% at $40.40.

Nortel finished the day flat at $59.20. The rest of the techs were split. 360networks was down 10.32% at $22.15, and Research In Motion was off 7.64% at $127.

On the upside, C-Mac inched up 1.33% to close at $76, and Celestica moved up 8.47% to close at $91.55.

The negative news spread to the CDNX, which finished down a dramatic 60.95 points to close at 3,171.92. Over 340 issues declined on the day compared to the only 196 that advanced. Volume was relatively light though at 27 million shares.

The loonie was not priced today as Canadian Banks were closed for the Remembrance Day holiday.

In the United States, all major markets finished the day off. A surprise negative earnings announcement this morning from Hewlett Packard left markets down across the board.

The Dow finished the day off 85.70 to close at 10.517.25, NASDAQ closed off 62.27 points at 2,966.72 and the S&P 500 finished the day 1,351.26, a decline of 14.72 points.