By James Langton

(August 3 – 13:00 ET) – Traders are mopping up the blood from a brutal opening this morning. Stocks opened sharply lower, but at midday are clawing their way back as bargain hunting thwarted any major selling. Nevertheless, the TSE 300 is still off 75 points to 10,293. Volume is about average at 61 million shares. The volume is dead even between buyers and sellers, yet decliners are outpacing advancers about 10:7.

Most of the losses are in the new economy group as profit warnings and rumours flew around the Street. Media stocks, cable, technology and utilities are all down. Mines, gold and real estate are off, too. Energy stocks, paper and publishers are picking up the slack.

Nortel Networks is leading the way down, off about 1.6% on 3.8 million shares. It’s joined by tech luminaries such as Alcatel, Celestica, Research in Motion and Exfo Electro.

Desjardins Laurentian is down slightly in active trading on the heels of its proposed takeover by the Mouvement Desjardins.

Despite the weakness in the hot stocks there are some pockets of strength today. TransCanada Pipelines is driving that group higher on news that it will continue selling some of its remaining natural gas assets in western Canada. Those deals should raise about $1.15 billion.

Along with TCPL, energy names such as Renaissance, Northstar and Petro-Canada are up, too.

CAE is up 5% after yesterday’s results beat the Street. A couple of other techs that slid yesterday are also up today, including Ballard Power and Descartes Systems.

Battery Technologies and Heritage Concepts continue to trade actively for no publicly-disclosed reason.

In other news, Franco-Nevada Mining Corp. announced first-quarter earnings to June 30 of 19¢ a share, up from 16¢ a share a year ago. Intertape Polymer Group Inc. saw its profit slide from 33¢ a share last year to 32¢ a shere for the period ending June 30.

In New York, stocks opened deeply down but are clawing their way back to intra-day highs at lunchtime. The Dow is off 21 points to 10,666. The Nasdaq composite is down just 35 points after a triple-digit negative open, to 3,622. The S&P 500 is off just two points to 14,36.

Profit warnings in the semiconductor sector, followed by gossip surrounding Motorola, Cisco and telecoms hit stocks on the open. Intel, Microsoft and Sun were also down. Stocks have since rallied back, and the Nasdaq has turned up since that moment. Energy stocks have also been bouncing.

The small caps are down slightly at midday. The CDNX is off just three points to 3,308. Volume is light at 11.6 million shares, with techs and miners down and oils up. Blackwell Capital Corp. is the hottest trader, up 266% to 55¢ on 2.1 million shares. Blackwell is acquiring Wellpoint Systems Inc. for $1.79 million in stock. Wellpoint is a private Alberta company which develops software for the oil and gas industry. Blackwell will be changing its name to Wellpoint.