By James Langton

(March 9 – 13:00 ET) – Markets are suffering a broad-based decline today as pessimism pervades trading, in the wake of Intel’s earning’s warning and mixed jobs reports in the U.S. and Canada.

The TSE is holding up better than American markets, but it is still down 81 points to 8146. Volume is a little light at 75.8 million shares, more than 2:1 in favour of sellers. Losers are outnumbering the winners 11:7.

Only gold, merchandisers and consumer stocks are showing any resistance, today. Everything else is down. Industrials, miners, financials and utilities are down sharply.

Nortel Networks is leading the way down. But the selling is half-hearted, down just 19¢ on 3.8 million shares. The obligatory tech sell-off is extending to Alcatel, Pivotal, Celestica, Delrina, Research in Motion, Exfo Electro and Tundra Semi. Ballard Power is down heavily, off about 8.4%.

Techs aren’t the only names suffering. Old economy stalwarts are also sliding. Gulf Canada, Bombardier, and Cypress Energy are all down. Barrick and Placer are both down in heavy trading, but Kinross is taking up the slack and pushing the golds into the black.

The financials are weak, led by Bank of Nova Scotia. But it’s not alone, all the big banks ad the insurers are sliding too.

The only buying in any volume is in penny stocks, it seems. Athabasca Oil Sands Trust is up on some merger buying. There are gains, albeit on generally light volume, in Bowater, Biovail, Veritas, First Service Corp. and Chieftain International.

The CDNX is suffering somewhat, too. It’s down 14 points to 3105. Volume is strong at 21.1 million shares. Techs and miners are leading the way south. Oils are off a smidge too. The volume is coming from TSE refugee William Multi-Tech, up 25% to 5¢ on 2.1 million shares. The firm was booted off the TSE yesterdayfor failure to meet continued listing requirements, despite its typically heavy volume.

The picture is a little uglier in New York, where no one can find much
reason to buy, either. The Dow Jones industrial average is off 183 points to 10674. The NASDAQ composite index has dropped 106 to 2062.

Intel is down about 10%. Gloomy comments from Intel regarding PCs and networkers has affected Cisco which is off 9%. There are sharp slides in Dell, Sun, JDS Uniphase, Microsoft and Oracle. Brocade and Commerce One are weighing down the NASDAQ, too. The NYSE is taking a hit, too, with Compaq, EMC, Nokia, IBM, Micron and Advanced Micro Devices all down sharply.