(December 12 – 13:15 ET) – Earnings warnings in a handful of tech stocks last night are hitting markets today. At midday the TSE 300 is down 147 points to 9,435.

Volume is robust at 68 million shares, favouring sellers about three to two. Losers outnumber the winners five to four.

Techs are giving up their recent gains, after Advanced Micro, Doubleclick and Kodak all issued warnings. The TSE industrial sub-index is down more than 4% as a result.

Eight other sub-indices are down, but none convincingly. Apart from industrials only golds are down more than 1%. Media stocks and utilities are providing the opposition.

Nortel Networks is leading the way down, off almost 5% on active volume of 5.3 million shares. All the top techs are joining it on the downside, including convincing slides in Janna, Celestica, JDS Uniphase, Tundra Semi, Alcatel and Research in Motion.

Pivotal is down sharply, too. News that it has been removed from the Merrill Lynch techfolio is likely adding to the general tech woes hitting the stock.

Banks are down with TD Bank leading the way, and Scotia not far behind in active trading. Investors fleeing banks are heading into the insurers, the safe haven in financials, keeping the financial sub-index nearly unchanged.

The big winner today is itemus inc., up 29.5% after Compaq Canada Corp. said it is buying 12.6% of the firm with a $10 million equity investment.

Also up are boring old economy stories such as Alcan, Potash, Bowater, Canadian Tire, Thomson, DaimlerChrysler and Gulf Canada.

GM is up nicely after it announced that it would cut 10% of its workforce in the next year, and gradually stop producing products for the Oldsmobile brand, allowing it to die.

In other business news, Moore Corp. Ltd. reported that U.S.-based investors Chancery Lane/GSC Investors L.P., a private equity firm will buy 20% of the firm through a $70.5 million convertible debenture issue. It will also install a new CEO.

Shaw Communications Inc. stock is up after making an offer to acquire the 6% of Canadian Satellite Communications Inc. it doesn’t already own.

In New York, the picture is much the same. Old economy names are up, partly from a rotation out of techs and partly in anticipation of the resolution of the U.S. election drama, with a possible victory for Texas governor George W. Bush.

The Dow is up 104 points to 10,830. The Nasdaq composite is down 35 points to 2,980, and the S&P is off just two ticks to 1,378.

Advanced Micro is weighing the techs down, particularly the optical networking stocks. On the Dow, even Kodak is up, as is P&G and GM. The brokerage sector is weak on analyst downgrades.

The CDNX is falling victim to the tech selloff, too, dropping 17 points to 2,909 on strong volume of 24.4 million shares. Techs are off 1.4%, with mines down just 0.3% and oils off 0.1%. WavePOINT Systems Inc. is the top trader off 14% to 60¢ on 6.3 million shares.