By Gavin Adamson
(March 28 – 17:00 ET) – North American markets dropped today, mostly on bearish sentiments by a famous bull. Abby Cohen, a Goldman Sachs portfolio analyst recommended to the brokerage company’s retail customers that they reduce their equity holdings. So they did, and others followed.
The news sent the Dow down by 68.87 to 10,956.98. The slide was led by some of the big gainers of late, like Intel, AOL and Nortel Networks. Nasdaq dropped as well, down 104.03 to 4,853.94. The S&P lost 13.04 to 1510.
The market drop was fairly broad. Retail issues and utilities also slipped. The price of crude also dropped, as OPEC announced plans to loosen up production restrictions.
The TSE was duly affected, especially by the Nortel sell off. The tech stock dropped C$3.85 under heavy volume, closing at $204.50. It1s parent, BCE also deflated by $2.2o to $197.55.
Although some of the US financial stocks fared well today, the Canadian banks slipped some more. The Royal Bank edged down by C$1.30 to $66.70. TD inched up, but BMO crept back by ten cents.
Seagrams continued to see attention on rumours that it will split up it various businesses, entertainment, music and theme parks, and sell them off. The stock was up another C$3.50, to $93.50.
The CDNX dropped 21.95 to 4,376, led by its technology stocks. That part of the index was down more than 200 points. The Mining stocks were down as well, as the price of gold slipped today.