By James Langton

(November 9 – 13:00 ET) – Markets are tanking this morning on continued uncertainty surrounding the U.S. presidential election. Traders see no convincing reason to buy when there’s so much uncertainty in the air.

With slightly more than half the Florida recount done, Gore has narrowed Bush’s lead to a mere 800 votes. On top of that rumblings of legal challenges threaten to throw the result of the election into turmoil for weeks. Couple this with a U.S. PPI number that show greater than expected headline inflation in October and traders are in a selling mood.

Techs are leading the way south again today. The TSE 300 is down 128 points to 9,424. Volume is light at just 54.5 million shares and decidedly negative, about five to three in favour of sellers. Breadth is negative, too, with losers outnumbering winners ten to seven.

The industrials are down almost 3%, followed by software, financials, utilities, gold and most everything else. Media stocks are the only real pocket of resistance.

TSE giant Nortel Networks is down 3.2% to $61.95 on 3.5 million shares. Nortel has plenty of company on the downside from Research in Motion, C-MAC, Celestica, BCE, Ballard Power, Certicom and BCE Emergis.

There are a couple of bright spots thanks to the financial group, although the banks, and particularly Royal Bank, are weighing the group down.

Mackenzie Financial continues to be a top trader, with traders speculating about competing bids from other fund firms, both domestic and global. Mackenzie is up 40¢ to $29.65 — that is above the proposed takeout price from C.I. — on strong volume of 2.5 million shares.

Manulife is also a bright spot, up 0.5% on news of improved earnings at the firm.

Other winners this morning include Seagram leading the media group higher, Creo Products, Clearnet, Biovail, Astral Media and Angiotech.

In business news, Westcoast Energy Inc. is proposing a $129 million bought deal to fund the acquisition of the 50% of the Empire State Pipeline it doesn’t already own.

In New York, markets are similarly cranky. The Dow Jones industrial average is down 62 points to 10,845. The Nasdaq composite has dropped another 48 points to 3,184, after a 5.5% plunge yesterday. The S&P 500 is off 11 points to 1,398.

The election and PPI seem to be the big issues there. IBM is down, as is Dell in anticipation of its earnings report today. News of a possible merger between Lehman Bros. and Bear Stearns have those stocks up, although the deal is reportedly far from done.

The CDNX rounds out the selling, down 16 points to 3.245. Volume is heavy at 20.1 million shares. Techs are leading the way down on the junior exchange, too, off 2%, while mines and oils are virtually unchanged. Rockwell Ventures Inc. is the top trader, up 3% to 66¢ on more than 3 million shares.