By James Langton
(October 18 – 12:50 ET) –
Traders tried to convince
themselves that there was a reason
to rally stocks this morning, but
the buying appeared to be nothing
more than a dead-cat bounce and
the selling pressure was building
at midday. The TSE 300 is off
almost 1%, down 55 points.
The volume has been light and
strongly negative. Decliners are
ahead of advancers by almost 2:1
and the selling is outweighing the
buying by almost 3:1 in very light
trading of 35 million shares.
Just about everything but real
estate and transportation issues
are losing ground. Gold is leading
the sell on the TSE, down almost
2.5%. The technology and financial
management groups aren’t far
behind.
CINAR is leading the
selling, its shares down almost
40% on reports that Montreal police
are investigating the firm. Tech
leaders such as Nortel, JDS
Uniphase and Newbridge
are among the largest losers on
general tech stock corrections.
Fairfax is the biggest
decliner among the financials,
down $2.
On the upside Hurricane
Hydrocarbons is selling well,
as is TD Bank, surprisingly.
TD usually joins tech-heavy
selloffs, given its image as tech-
heavy bank.
In Montreal, the selling has
been more moderate. The ME is down
just 15 points so far. Both
Alberta and Vancouver are also
joining the selloff, down nine and
two points, respectively.
And a similarly choppy trading
day on Wall Street so far, with
the techs leading the way down at
noon. The Dow Jones average, which
had been up as much as 100 points
in early trading and then down
about 40, was ahead almost 30
points at 12:40 ET. Nasdaq has
been a much more committed seller.
It is currently down about 70
points at midday, while the S&P
500 has lost about seven points.