Wednesday’s Cisco-led rally didn’t prove very convincing Thursday, as traders took profits and sold much of yesterday’s gain.

The S&P/TSX index finished the day down 75.56 points to 7,632.26.

A light morning trade was met with stronger action in the afternoon, ending with 143 million shares traded.

The volume favoured sellers by a 19:8 margin over buyers. Market breadth was also certainly bearish, with losers outnumbering winners by six to five.

The gold sector was the only group that enjoyed gains Thursday, climbing about 1.6%. Everything else was down.

Generally yesterday’s big winners became today’s big losers, as traders decided that the rally was overdone and unjustified.

Techs dropped 4% today, health care stocks finished down 2.5%. Other notable losers include industrials, consumer stocks, financials and telecoms.

Familiar names in technology led the way down today. Nortel Networks finished down 6.4% to $4.40, albeit on modest volume of 6.2 million shares.

Research in Motion was a big loser, dropping 12% on the day, in heavy volume. The pain was also spread to names such as JDS Uniphase, ATI, Wireless Matrix, Zarlink, Geac Computer, and Creo. All lost more than 6% on the day. CAE and Celestica were lower, too.

The banks were led lower by TD Bank, down 1.1%. Scotia was also lower. Again, the gains they enjoyed yesterday, following the techs, unwound today as the techs fell back to earth. Also, Trilon Financial dropped 0.5% in heavy trading.

Other big cap names were weak too, with BCE dropping 2%, and EnCana down 0.7%.

Golds enjoyed a flight to safety amid the selloff. Barrick led the way with a 1.6% gain on the day. It was joined by Kinross, TVX Gold, Glamis and Fort Knox Gold, on the upside.

Dynacare was the big winner today, gaining 25% on news that it is selling out to a U.S. firm.

Wescam gained 10% on news that it is planning to sell out, and has hired a financial advisor to help it explore strategic alternatives.

Other gainers include Pan American Silver, Baytex Energy, Descartes Systems and Southward Energy.

In earnings news, Microcell Telecommunications posted first quarter consolidated net losses of $95.3 million, compared with net losses of $172.0 million for the same period last year.

Leon’s Furniture reported its quarterly net income was $6,848,000, an increase of 29.6%.

In New York, traders were also in a selling mood. The tech weakness wasn’t helped by Moody’s cutting WorldCom’s debt rating to junk status. But the broader market was also weakened by lower than expected retail sales data, including a soft report from Wal-Mart.

As a result, the Dow Jones industrial average finished down 104.4 points on the day to 10,037.4. The S&P 500 dropped 15.8 points to finish at 1,073. The Nasdaq shed 45.8 points to close the day at 1,650.5.

Only the S&P/TSX Venture index shook off the selling habit. It gained 10.5 points on the day to finish at 1156.65. Volume was active at 35.9 million shares. Maxim Power Corp. was the day’s top trader, gaining 9¢ to 43¢ on volume of 7.4 million shares.