By Jeff Sanford

(January 10 – 18:00 ET) – The TSE 300 opened near its 12-month low this morning, but after climbing throughout the day managed to post a slight gain. Toronto’s composite index inched up 28.80 points to end the session at 8,600.83.

Today’s advance was reasonably broad-based. Nine of the 14 sub-indices closed higher., and only three lost ground today.

The movement was restrained though. Most advances were less than 1%. Only communications and consumer products advanced more than that, gaining 1.44% and 1.11% respectively.

Conglomerates, metal and pipelines lost on the day, though none more than 1%.

Among individual issues, 555 advanced while 450 that declined. Volume was a steady 178 million shares.

The federal government promised today to help subsidize Bombardier in its ongoing trade war with Brazil. The government is going to offer up $1.7 billion in financing to win a contract from Air Wisconsin Airlines. Bombardier finished down on the day, losing 4.06% to $21.25.

Recent hoopla around Apple seems to be helping Corel (which has announced it is launching products for the new Macintosh OS X operating system) and its battered share price. Corel was up 46.15% to $4.75 today.

In the wake of yesterday’s successful $300 million bond deal, shares in Gulf Canada were up 6.67% to $8. The stock was one of the more heavily traded issues today, with volume just over 9 million shares.

Most price changes, though, were relatively constrained today, moving within 1% or 2% as has been the trend all week.

RIM, though, was up 6.58% to $77.80 on the strength of a tech-buying spree south of the border.

Agrium chalked up a nice little jump today, climbing 4.88% to $19.35.

Although sales at Sears increased this quarter, they fell short of expectations. This shortfall dragged the department store stock down slightly. Sears ended the day off 4.81% at $23.75.

Cyberplex shares were also down, sliding 6.38% to $2.20. Shares in Stuart Energy, makers of hydrogen generation technologies (expected to fit nicely into fuel cell-powered cars) also dropped. Stuart shares fell 6.67% to close at $7.70. No news on either of those movements.

Tech stocks had a good in the U.S. today. But the action wasn’t just containd to Nasdaq, as all major markets posted gains today.

The Dow Jones industrial average added 31.72 points to 10,604.27, NASDAQ gained a solid 82.88 to 2,524.18, and the S&P 500 jumped 12.47 points at 1,313.27.