By Jeff Sanford

(December 15 – 17:30 ET) – Negative noises from Microsoft after the bell, yesterday, left investors in a pretty foul mood, today, sending North American markets on a downward spiral.

The Toronto Stock Exchange 300 composite index opened low and stayed there most of the day. At one point it was 200 points off yesterday’s close.

A late afternoon rally hauled it up to a slight gain during the day, but that disappeared before the closing bell. It down 49.38 points, at 9020.00.

Sector-by-sector, the market was relatively split with six up, seven down and one unchanged. On the upside, gold finished up 3.36% and pipelines gained 2.49%. On the downside, the consumer products sub-sector dropped 2.64% while the industrial products sector fell 1.51%.

Among individual issues, decliners outpaced advancers 631 to 475. Volume was relatively light at 170 million shares.

Insurers seem to be attracting a lot of attention lately. Investors are fleeing from the banks who may be overexposed their lending portfolios to the high tech industry.

Industrial Alliance rocketed up 7%, yesterday. It was Manulife’s turn today. The insurer closed up 6.49% at $44.30.

On the other hand, Royal Bank lost 1.48%, following an aggressive sell-off of its rivals yesterday.

The CDNX finished the day off 8.72% at 2871.01. declining issues outnumbered advancers 334 to 271. Volume was 40 million shares.

The Canadian dollar lost some of its recent gains today, sliding 0.26% to 65.80¢ U.S.

South of the border, the “Microsoft-effect” knocked the Dow Jones industrial average down 240.03 points to 10434.96. The NASDAQ composite index dropped 74.32 points to end close at 2654.19.