By James Langton
(March 31 – 13:00 ET) – As the first quarter grinds to a close, stocks are limping along. The TSE and its mentor Nasdaq both jumped sharply on the open today, but have been langorously selling off through the morning. At midday, though, the TSE 300 remains in the black, up 16 points to 9,410. Volume is light at 84.3 million shares, trading about 2:1 in favour of buyers. Advancers are ahead of decliners about 4:3.
Leadership is thin, with the techs dominating the trade. The industrials remain slightly positive and the software stocks are quite strong, although the utilities have slipped into negative territory again. Nortel Networks is up slightly, but BCE is down.
Stocks that took a thumping yesterday have been clawing back this morning. Strong gains are evident in BCE Emergis, Ballard Power, Research in Motion, Cognicase and Creo. Biovail is also rallying impressively.
However, tech weakness lingers in stocks such as Sierra Wireless, JDS Uniphase, 724 Solutions and Certicom. All are selling off sharply again.
Financials are sliding off recent gains, led by the banks and fund companies. Golds are the only sector with any strength. Placer leads the way, up 3% in heavy trading.
In New York, the story is much the same. Nasdaq opened strong and is now drifting back into negative territory. At midday it’s down 41 points to 4,417. Volume is relatively light, though. The Dow has added 28 points to 11,008. The S&P 500 is up three points to 1,491.
The small caps are feeling the bounce back as well. At noon the CDNX index is up 30 points to 4,210 on weak volume of 31.8 million shares. Each of the techs, oils and miners are up a little over 1%. Watersave Logic Corp. is the hot trade, up 17% to 21¢ on 1.1 million shares.