By James Langton
(April 5 – 13:00 ET) – Markets have been bouncing around all morning, although they have yet to reset yesterday’s lows. Some traders are expecting stocks to reset those lows before the buying can begin in earnest again.
At midday the TSE is down another 104 points to 9038. Volume is light at 84.3 million shares, about 9:7 in favour of the sellers. Declines are ahead of advances 11:8.
Nine of the TSE’s 14 groups are down, led by media stocks, industrials and software. Nortel Networks is off another 3%, joined by JDS Uniphase, and Cognos. Seagram and Rogers are both down strongly in the media group. Financials are down too, led by the mutual fund companies.
Although software stocks are down the biotechs are up, pushing the consumer group up. Food processors are strong, as are base metal miners. Biovail is posting strong gains. 724 Solutions is also bouncing back from recent beatings at the hands of nervous tech investors. Ulster Petroleums is up strongly, as is Veritas Energy. Ulster received a $776 million takeover bid from private energy firm Hunt this morning.
In New York stocks have spent the morning yo-yoing too. At noon the Dow is down 112 points to 11053. The Nasdaq is down 25 points to 4124, although it is turning positive. The S&P is down 11 points to 1484.
The CDNX is dropping again. The index is down 62 points to 3939. Volume is very light at 22.5 million shares. Both the miners and energy stocks are up slightly, but tech is selling aggressively again. Abitibi Mining Corp is the leading trade, up 27% to 14¢ on 1.1 million shares.