By James Langton

(March 15 – 13:00 ET) – Bay Street is embattled again today. The market got some negative inflation data this morning, but that isn’t hurting the market as much as the worldwide tech stock sell-off.

At noon the TSE 300 is down 177 points, or 1.9%, to 9,216. Volume is strong again at 124 million shares, about 2:1 in favour of sellers. Market breadth is also deeply negative, about 13:7 in favour of decliners.

On a sector by sector basis the TSE is evenly split between groups that are up and those that are down. The gainers have been led by minor improvements in real estate and mining stocks. But there are huge losses in the industrials, utilities and consumer products sectors. The industrials are down 3.3%, with enginering firms down 9%, software off 5% and tech hardware down more than 3%.

Name a hot tech stock and it has undoubtedly been slugged today. Certicom is down 10%. 724 Solutions has dropped 8%.Ballard Power is down 12%. Research in Motion has lost 7%. Speculative Internet stocks are taking massive hits, including NHC Communications down almost 30%. Biotechs remain weak too.

The highly touted penny stocks that have been driving the trading in recent weeks have almost all taken brutal haircuts today, down anywhere from 10% in Sikaman Gold to 28% in Battery Technology. Laidlaw is the leading trader, up 7% on 23.1 million shares, after being taken out to the woodshed for a beating from traders yesterday.

There are a few small winners today, including Power Financial up 8%, Potash up 3% and OCI Communications up 9%, but they are far outnumbered by the big losers.

The heretofore blossoming CDNX is getting beaten down today too. At midday the index is down 138 points to 4,237. Volume is strong at 59.2 million shares. The index has lost 3.2%, led by its techs, down 6.8%. Energy and mining stocks are off 2.5% and 1.6% respectively. Ecompark Inc. has dropped 17% to $3.89 on more than 1 million shares.

In New York, stocks are in a more rotational mode, investors are selling techs aggressively, but they are buying cyclicals in their place. The Dow is back up 165 points at midday to 9,976. Nasdaq has dropped another 100 points to 4,606. The S&P is following the Dow, up 17 points to 1,376.