By Jeff Sanford
(August 29 – 17:50 ET) – The Toronto Stock Exchange’s late summer rally pulled up short today as profit-taking in some blue chips yanked the TSE 300 composite index down 96.05 points to 11128.40.
The retreat caps a good run of record-breaking closes for the TSE over the past week.
Strategic and institutional traders seem to be on vacation, leaving the momentum players in the trading seat. Over 289 million shares changed hands, far more than has been the norm this summer. However, more than 123 million of those shares were in Repap Enterprises, a penny stock.
Popular momentum plays Heritage Concepts and Digital Gem, an “online financial services company,” rounded out the top three most popular issues. The fourth most heavily traded stock was Plaintree Systems, which has ridden on a wave of volume over the past week but today slid 24%.
Among the serious players, Nortel Networks fell 2.03%, Bombardier lost 1.19% and Husky gained 5.38%. All were lightly traded.
Overall, 554 issue advanced while 539 declined. Nine of 14 subindices finished down on the day. The decline was led by metals, industrial products and pipelines.
The CDNX lost 5.57 points to close at 3420.60.
The C$ slipped to US67.31¢ from yesterday’s 67.43¢.
In the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average shed 37.74 points on profit taking to close at 11215.10, NASDAQ added 11.58 points to 4082.17 and the S&P 500 lost 9.73 points to close at 1504.36.