Another jump in oil prices threatened Thursday to end Wall Street’s four-day winning streak, while gold and technology stocks, Nortel Networks in particular, pushed Bay Street higher.

At midday, Toronto’s S&P/TSX composite was ahead by 54 points or 0.66% to 8276.97, while the TSX Venture Exchange added 7.41 points or 0.5% at 1500.53.

The Dow industrial average was off 39.08 points or 0.39% to 10044.07. The Nasdaq was down 5.57 points or 0.3% at 1825.80, while the S&P 500 sagged 2.94 points or 0.27% to 1092.23.

The Canadian dollar was up more than half a cent, 0.52¢, to US77.15¢.

Bay Street was led by healthy jumps in the gold (3.37%) and technology (2.22%) sub-indices, while energy stocks were also ahead (0.87%). Gold was lead by Barrick Gold (up 3.27%) and Goldcorp (up 4.25%) and Kinross Gold. (1.39%).

Tech stocks got a boost from Nortel, which announced more layoffs, but also that “estimated limited preliminary unaudited” earnings per share in the first half of 2004 were zero to US2¢ a share. Nortel stock was up 8.4% on volume of more than 23.7 million shares.

In New York, concerns about the rising price of oil weighed on U.S. markets, leaving them in the red. Light sweet crude oil for September delivery traded up US62¢ at US$47.89 in New York amid a decline in U.S. oil and gasoline inventories and continued uncertainty over supply from Iraq. The jump brought the price closer to the psychologically important US$50 a barrel mark.

Meanwhile, shares of Google were set to begin trading after being issued at a price of US$85 each in the company’s initial public offering. The offering, smaller than originally planned, raised US$1.67 billion.

In overseas markets, London’s FTSE 100 was up 9.5 points at 4,364.7. Frankfurt’s DAX 30 was down 0.04%, while the CAC 40 in Paris was up 0.31%.

Japan’s Nikkei average rose 129.27 points or 1.2% to 10,903.53.

Hong Kong shares rallied as traders speculated — correctly — that several blue chips were about to report impressive gains in first-half earnings. The Hang Seng index jumped 168.13 points or 1.4% to 12,396.67.