(March 6 – 18:30 ET) – Toronto stocks enjoyed a good rally today. Led by a revival in techs, the TSE 300 gained 106.31 points to close at 8,205.60.

A 50-basis point rate cut from Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge provided the impetus. Investors have been looking for something to trade on, and the cut gave them the optimism.

The industrial sub-index gained a dramatic 5.83% today. Also up more than 1% were the paper, conglomerates and communications sub-indices. Financial services fared less well, falling 1.16%.

Among individual issues, market breadth was strongly positive with 634 advancers and 452 decliners. Volume was a strong 164 million shares.

Nortel Networks led the advance among the techs, gaining 8.42% to $29.50. Mitel rose 4.53%, ATI gained 4.70%, Name Inc. added 16.22 and C-Mac advanced 7.10%. JDS though was down 0.32% to $43.61 and 360Networks was off 8.70% to $9.13.

In the financials, Bank of Nova Scotia was slaughtered today after reporting that deteriorating economic conditions in the U.S. had taken a toll on its loan portfolio. Traders knocked it down 7.54% to $42.44.

The rest of the banks were split between worries about those loan worries and the rate cut. It was a split decision with BMO down 1.01% to $39.20, CIBC down 0.50% to $49.70, and Royal down 0.96% to $48.53. On the upside TD gained 1.16% to close at $41.80 ,while Sun Life tacked on 0.25% to close at $32.60.

The CDNX today was up 6.68 points at 3,102.42 on relatively heavy volume of 44 million shares. Advancers outpaced decliners, 243 to 209.

The loonie made good ground on the rate cut, rising 0.51% to close at US64.96¢.

Buyers showed up on the Nasdaq today, boosting the composite index a strong 61.51 points. It closed at 2,204.43. The Dow Jones industrial average gained just 28.92 points to 10,591.22, while the S&P 500 added 12.39 points to 1,253.80.