Markets rallying on light trading

The morning’s rally was fairly
broad, although just 50 million
shares have changed hands.
Advancers outpaced decliners by
a margin of about 19:14. The buying
volume was more than double the
selling, yet new lows are
outweighing the new highs by
3:1.

Most sectors are up, with
except the golds, which have given
up another 2% today. Cable stocks
are leading the buying, joined
by the energy issues and the
utilities, particularly technology.
Rogers, which reported its
strong earnings yesterday, is up
about 7%. Nortel, BCE,
and JDS Uniphase are driving
the buying in big cap tech stocks.
While some of the smaller tech
offerings, including Celestica,
Microcell, Delrina and
Research in Motion are all
up in sympathy too.

On an “options-expiration
Friday,” the heaviest trading
issues are the index units,
TIPS and i60’s. They have traded
more than 1.6 million and 1.4
million shares respectively, and
are each up about 1.2%.

The golds continue to lead the
down side trade, with Goldcorp,
Barrick, Franco-Nevada, and
TVX all down. Potash is down
heavily again today; while the
other big sellers are mostly just
on an indiviual basis.

In Montreal, the trading has
been strongly to the upside too,
more than 1%, with a 40 point
rise. Alberta is up about five
points and Vancouver is up one
point.

In New York, the rally which
began in the late afternoon
yesterday is back on the rails
today. The Dow is up about 135
points at midday, Nasdaq is up
about 35 points, while the
S&P has added 16 points.