Bay Street failed to hold onto early gains Thursday, while Wall Street began the day in the red and has stayed that way.

At midday, the Toronto Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX composite index was down 15.33 points or 0.18% at 8347.63. The TSX Venture exchange was the only North American market in the black, but not by much – it was up 1.99 points or 0.13% to 1503.49.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 73.01 points or 0.72% at 10053.5. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index was down 9.9 points or 0.9% at 1088.73. The technology-laced Nasdaq Composite Index was off 18.72 points or 1.01% at 1836.34.

The Canadian dollar slipped 0.24 of a cent to US75.82¢.

Toronto stocks opened higher on Thursday after Wednesday’s 101-point selloff, with technology stocks, and Nortel Networks Corp., in particular, leading the way. But the main Toronto market see-sawed throughout the morning, before ending up in negative territory.

Gold, energy and financial shares were all down about 28% in the morning. Techs ended up unchanged.

Energy shares fell despite the fact oil prices edged up past the US$43 a barrel mark.

On the New York Mercantile Exchange, the price of crude rose 43 cents to US$43.26 a barrel after dropping 3% Wednesday when the president of OPEC said the cartel had enough supply to plug short-term gaps in demand. But it reversed course in the midst of conflicting signals from Russia about oil giant Yukos. Russia’s Justice Ministry said Thursday it had revoked permission granted by bailiffs for the company to use previously frozen funds to pay for day-to-day operations. There have also been concerns about the reliability of crude supplies from Iraq, where saboteurs have attacked pipelines and disrupted exports.

Oil prices no doubt came into play on Wall Street, overshadowing some good news on the jobs front in the U.S. The U.S. Labour Department said the number of new people signing up for unemployment benefits dropped last week by a seasonally adjusted 11,000, to 336,000. It marks the lowest level since the beginning of July and is slightly better than analysts were expecting.

In Friday’s report, economists are looking for the U.S. economy to have created at least 240,000 jobs last month. The Canadian jobless report for July also comes out Friday. It’s expected at least 30,000 jobs were added in Canada during last month.

U.S. investors were also put off by reports that several U.S. retailers turned in disappointing results for July because of unseasonably cool weather.

Meanwhile, some of Canada’s biggest companies delivered quarterly earnings reports Thursday morning.

Alcan Inc. turned around last year’s loss with a profit of US$331 million US as the purchase of French aluminum producer Pechiney SA and strong metals prices boosted the bottom line. Alcan’s profit contrasted with a loss of US$92 million US a year ago. Revenue increased to US$6.3 billion, from US$3.6 billion.

Shares in Brascan Corp. tripled its quarterly profit on increased power generation and real estate revenue.

Manulife Financial Corp. will release its second quarter financial results after markets close Thursday.

Overseas, Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average of 225 issues closed up 50.87 points, or 0.46%, at 11,060.89.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index climbed 211.66 points, or 1.72%, closing at 12,491.92.

London’s FTSE 100 index rose 12.9 points at 4,421.

Frankfurt’s DAX 30 climbed 0.35% and the Paris CAC 40 was up 0.8%.