By Jeff Sanford

(March 7 – 18:00 ET) – Yesterday’s interest rate cuts provided enough optimism to get traders in a buying mood today. The TSE 300 gained 96.22 points, or 1.17%, closing at 8,301.78.

Among individual issues, market breadth was positive with 654 advancers and 422 decliners. Volume was relatively heavy at 188 million shares.

The oil and gas sector was especially strong today, advancing over 3%. The metals and minerals gained 2.33% while real estate, industrial products, financial services and conglomerates were all up over 1%. Overall, nine of the TSE’s fourteen sub-indices advanced. Pipelines led on the downside with a 1.32% loss.

Among the tech stocks, Sierra Wireless shot up 18.39% to $44.99 after it announced it would use a government loan to develop a next-generation modem.

Celestica gained 6.19% at $81.77, while ATI advanced 6.41% at $6.64. Descartes Systems rocketed ahead 21.91% to $28.65, while 360 Networks was heavily sold, dropping 13.91% to $7.86.

CIBC led a general advance in bank shares, rising 3.62% to $51.50

The CDNX closed relatively unchanged today at 3,101.50, off 0.92 points. Market breadth was just about even with 252 advancers and 234 decliners. Volume was 37.7 million shares.

The loonie gave up much of yesterday’s advance, dropping 0.62% to close at US64.56¢.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average gained a solid 138.38 points to close at 10,729.60. The Nasdaq composite index climbed 19.49 points to 2,223.92, and the S&P 500 added 8.09 points to 1,261.89.

Look for a selloff in Yahoo tomorrow morning. The company announced after markets closed that its first quarter revenues and earnings will fall short of expectations due to lower ad revenues induced by the economic uncertainty. CEO Tim Koogle is stepping down, but remain at the company as chairman.