By James Langton
(November 8 – 13:00 EST) – Despite all the fear surrounding the future of Microsoft, most North American markets have held up rather well this morning. The TSE 300 has simply floated around. It’s been virtually unchanged all day, currently down five points.
Trading has been very quiet with just 37 million shares changing hands so far. Decliners are ahead of advancers about 4:3.
There’s a fairly even split between winners and losers on a sector basis, but no major moves in either direction. Brewers and food retailers are leading on the upside, along with investment firms, autos and biotechs. Household goods, transports and miners are leading the downside trade.
The wake for the dead Onex take-over is lacking any sense of celebration. Air Canada stock has been dropping today in active trading. It’s currently off about $1, with 4 million shares traded.
BCE is off about a dollar too, despite another strong move by Nortel, which is up $1.25. Other tech stocks, Research in Motion, Corel and Wi-Lan are all trading well into positive territory. Poco Pete has also witnessed some active upside trading.
On the downside JDS Uniphase is off rather deeply, about $7.70 to $281. While there are selected stocks down for various reasons there are no convincing sector moves that way.
Other Canadian markets are similarly mellow. Montreal is the only bull in the bunch, up about 2.5 points; while Alberta is down six points and the VSE is virtually unchanged.
In New York, the reaction to the Microsoft mess has been rather muted too. The Dow is off about 35 points, but nothing close to what futures trading seemed to be indicating. The Nasdaq is up 12 points, and the S&P has added a point.