By Gavin Adamson

(March 6 – 17:00 ET) – Canadian investors paid little attention to remarks made today by U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, threatening further interest rate hikes to cool an overheated economy. U.S. reacted by engaging in a flurry of selling.

But, the TSE soared on the backs of industrial products and utilities where index giants Nortel and BCE, respectively, reside. BCE added C$9.10 to $176.50, while Nortel put on $12.50 to $186.25. The index gained 143.99 to 9,606.89. Six of 14 subsectors made gains.

CDNX investors liked the rising price of crude and continued to play on the small cap tech stocks, pushing that index up by 85.73 to 4,257.87. Savanna Resources added another penny, to C10 cents. Ecompark Inc., a start-up Internet management company, swelled by 27%, to C$4.99, and FAS International doubled, to $1.39.

The Dow, by contrast, reacted sharply to Greenspan’s speech at Boston College. The index dropped by 198.87 to 10,168.33, led down by Microsoft, GE, American Express, Walmart and Intel. The S&P was dragged down 18.72 to 1,390.45.

Nasdaq cracked the 5,000 mark today, before skidding back to 4,903.73 on the Greenspan news. Still, Internet companies like Yahoo and Lycos, some of the networking and semi-conductors companies and biotechs finished closed higher.