By James Langton

(April 20 – 13:00 ET) – Markets headed down at the open and more or less stayed there all morning. At midday, the Toronto Stock Exchange 300 composite index is down 94 points to 8054. Volume is soft at 65.5 million shares, with buyers holding a 4 to 3 edge on sellers. Declining issues outnumber advancing issues 5 to 4.

On a sector basis the market is broadly negative, too. Eleven of the fourteen sub-indices are flat or down. Paper stocks are the only ones up convincingly.

The industrials are leading the way down thanks to the slide in Nortel, and its collateral damage. Golds, pipelines and utilities are down too, but most of the slides are moderate. Earnings concern among the techs is sparking the most aggressive selling. Latent economic worries are also surfacing, fuelled by fear of an economic collapse in Argentina.

Nortel is down 6.6% on moderate volume of 5.4 million shares. The company’s quarterly earnings were in line with analysts expectations, yesterday, but Nortel pledged to cut more jobs, thereby delivering negative future expectations. This morning, Goldman Sachs cut its earnings on Nortel from 36¢ per share to 23¢ citing “earnings visibility”.

The weakness in Nortel has spilled over into a number of other techs including Research in Motion, Celestica, Cognos, 360networks, C-MAC, Descartes Systems, Exfo Electro, Sierra Wireless, GSI Lumonics and Ballard Power. Oddly, one of Nortel’s most dependent suppliers, JDS Uniphase, is bucking the trend after analysts upgraded its stock. It is up about 7% as a result.

The pain isn’t limited to techs today either. Traders are also taking the opportunity to do a little selling in Barrick Gold, Minacs Worldwide, ATS Automated Tooling and Domtar.

The upside is a mixed bag. Abitibi is enjoying a nice 5% rally in heavy volume. Other winners include Bombardier, Slocan Forest, Pivotal Corp., CGI Group, FPI, Primetech and Westport Innovations.

The CDNX is bucking the trend, today. It’s up four points at midday to 3033. Volume is strong at 21.3 million shares. Energy stocks are leading the way higher, overcoming slides in tech and miners. World Sales & Merchandising Inc. is the top trader up 67% to 5¢ on volume of more than 2 million shares.

In New York, stocks didn’t open quite as weakly as they did in Toronto, but they worsened through the morning. Although trading action is not heavy. The Dow Jones industrials index is off 156 points to 10537. The NASDAQ composite index is off 39 points to 2147. The S&P has dropped 16 points to 1238.