By James Langton
(September 23 – 13:30 EST) – Markets held up early gains through some choppy morning trading. The TSE 300 index is up about 35 points at midday.
Volume has been decent at 55 million shares. Market breadth is relatively bullish. While there is a pretty even split between advances and declines, volume is strongly is favour of buyers, about 2:1.
On a sector basis, the golds are still strong as are technology stocks. Oil and gas producers are performing well too. But it’s a tech story on the TSE leader board. Chances are your stock is up today. JDS Uniphase, Nortel, Newbridge, even TD Waterhouse and BCE Emergis are up strongly so far.
For the golds, the usual suspects, Barrick and Placer continue to trade very heavily and to the upside. While energy stocks such as Poco Pete and Richland are up, mainly on optimism surounding OPEC cuts and the dawning of autumn, and increased fuel usage.
On the downside, paper stocks are being battered, this is happening across North America as analysts are turning against these stocks. Bowater is leading the way down, off about $4.40 already today. Transports such as Daimler-Chrysler and CNR are down. Daimler is being hit by analysts who are recommending Ford instead. The talk on the Streets is that Daimler’s North American head may lose his job as a result of the firm’s poor earnings.
Montreal is sticking close to the TSE, it is up about 10 points so far. Vancouver and Alberta make it unanimous for the bulls, their markets are up one and two points respectively.
In New York markets have enjoyed good volume and a choppy trade. The Dow is currently up about 40 points on some of its cyclicals. Nasdaq has been bouncing from positive to negative all da. It is currently down about four points. The S&P is more or less unchanged.