By Stewart Lewis
(September 16 – 17:30 ET) – It
was a Hurricane Floyd kind of day
in the U.S. markets today. A few
of the minor exchanges in New
York – the New York Mercantile
Exchange, the Bond Market
Association and the NY Board of
Trade futures market – even
closed their doors early.
Those that stayed open suffered
a dark and stormy afternoon.
Stocks fell in a roller-coaster
session as corporate profit
warnings and interest-rate ghosts
caused investors to pull out of
equities. Bonds advanced. The U.S.
dollar firmed up. The Dow Jones
Industrial Average dropped 36
points to 10,766 in late-in-the-day
trading. The Nasdaq Composite
Index fell 1.20 to 2815.40. The
Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index
gave up 3.20 to 1321.20, and the
NYSE slipped 0.10 to 608.40.
Almost all the Canadian markets
fell today too. The TSE dropped
45.98 to 7017.65 on a market volume
of 101,031,490. Declines
outweighed advances by a
3:2 ratio. The biggest
fluctuations
on the TSE were Fairfax
Financial – up $43.95 to
$219.00 – and technology stock
darling JDS Uniphase, which
dropped $2.95 to $158.55. The
S&P/TSE 60 dipped by a mere 2.72
points.
The Montreal Exchange slipped
26.82 points. The Alberta Exchange
dropped slightly; it was down
8.55. The Vancouver Stock Exchange
was up a little. It closed up 0.01
points.
The Canadian dollar finished
the day at $0.6774.
In business news, the big story
of the day was Laurentian Bank’s
announcement that it is buying the
Sun Life insurance’s trust
company. Canada Life
policyholders voted strongly in
favour of demutualization.
Industrial-Alliance also hopes to
demutualize. It released more
details of what it perceives to be
the benefits of demutualizing for
its soon-to-be-shareholders.