By Gavin Adamson
(March 29 – 17:00 ET) – North American tech stocks continued their heavy slide, apparently based on yesterday’s recommendation from Wall Street analyst Abbey Cohen to scale down equity holdings.
The TSE dropped 220.69 to 9702.07. It was led down by heavy weights BCE, Nortel and JDS Uniphase. BCE lost C$5.55 to $192 and Nortel gave up $9.55 to $194.95 each on big volume. JDS Uniphase wasn’t traded a lot, but deflated by $13 to $174.
On the CDNX it was pretty much the same story. The index drooped by 69.42, or 1.6%, led by a 3% drop in its tech portion. Nuvo Network Management was pared down by nearly 12%, to $2.12.
Canadian traders were following a downslide in tech stocks that started on the Nasdaq. Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Cisco and Veritas each pulled the index down, by 189/71 to 4644.58. Palm also slipped, as well as the biotechs in general.
The Dow edged upwards, buoyed by General Electric, whose stock was given a vote of optimism by a Wall St. analyst. Exxon surged some as well. The Dow gained 82.61 to 11,018.72. The S&P added less than point.