By Gavin Adamson
(November 8 – 17:30 ET) – It was a slow day for blue chip equities, but tech stocks continued to be busy, partly because of the Microsoft case.
The TSE closed down 10.82, to 7,286.81. Eight of the subgroups were down, led by Real Estate, which dropped more than 2.5%. Fairfax Financial picked up C$9.05 to $216.
Air Canada dropped $1 to $9.90, during the first day of trading after the failed Onex merger bid. JDS Uniphase, the Ottawa-based fibre optics company, dropped C$7.45 to $281.25.
The ME inched up 0.39 to 3,808.53. The VSE slipped 1.67 to 391.24. The ASE dropped 20.47 to 2,882.08.
In the U.S., the Dow gained14.37 to close at 10,718.85. NYSE losers outpaced winner by a margin of 3 to 2. The oils were up, on general optimism after a good earnings report from BP Amaco. S&P closed up 6.87 to 1377.01, but the major story of the day was on Nasdaq again.
The U.S. Justice Department is considering whether to ask a federal judge to break up Microsoft, after the Judge in the case made a finding of fact that said Microsoft has used its monopoly position to stifle its competition.
Analysts were optimistic that Microsoft would weather the storm, at least in the short term, and the stock slipped US$2 11/16 to $88 15/16. Meanwhile its competitors gained: Red Hat, which sells the Linux operating system, gained US$19 5/8 to US$105 9/15. IBM. Lucent, and Hewlett Packard were each up today as well.
Nasdaq swelled another 41.68 to close at 3,143.97 on the day.