By Jeff Sanford

(January 4 – 18:00 ET) – Once the enthusiasm of yesterday’s rate cuts wore off, investors couldn’t find much in the markets to get excited about.

Though, yesterday’s gain was preserved, the TSE stayed within a narrow trading band and ended up finishing off slightly at 8,905.65, down 32.13 points or 0.36%.

Market breadth among the sectors was negative with only four sub-indices moving higher — industrial products, merchandising, metals and paper. Leading on the downside was the pipelines, which was off a substantial 6.06%.

Among individual issues, market breadth was also negative, though, only slightly. While 523 issues declined on the day, 508 advanced. Volume was substantial at 163 million shares.

With a debt-refinancing plan in place, Laidlaw was the most heavily traded stock of the day. It finished up 54.55% at 34¢. Over18 million shares were traded.

Second most popular issues was Nortel, which was up 3.05% at $54.15.

The insurers continued their sell-off today. Manulife dropped 8.54% to close at $40.15, while Sun Life was down 8.11% to close at $34.

All of the bank stocks continued to creep up today, with most rising between 1 and 2%. Royal led the way, though, with a 3% advance to close at $51.50

Also in the financials, CI fell 5.36% to close at$15, while Mackenzie inched up 1.11% to $27.30.

After big run-ups in the last two days, some of the big name stocks sold off. RIM was down 18.10% at $86 and JDS Uniphase fell 8.62% to $73.65.

TransAlta finished the day off 4.82% to close at $20.75, while TransCanada slipped 3.58% to $16.15.

The CDNX finished up a slight 0.6% today to close at 2,947.50, a gain of 20.87 points. Volume was on the light side with 30 million shares trading. Advancers outnumbered decliners 232 to 194.

After it’s holiday run-up the loonie continued to decline today. It closed at US$66.73, a drop of 0.06%.

In New York, markets were also trading in a relatively narrow band. The major indices all finished off slightly.

The Dow slipped 33.34 points to 10,912.41, the Nasdaq composite finished dropped 50.12 points to 2,566.57, and the S&P 500 finished down 14.28 points at 1,333.28.