By Jeff Sanford

(August 24 – 18:00 ET) – The TSE 300 posted yet another record today as the 300 index closed at 11,179.00. That was up 71.19 points on the day and 40 points above Tuesday’s record of 11,137.20.

The advance was on big gains in the paper and forest products index, which was up a dramatic 2.79%. Within that group Abitibi-Consolidated was up 5.63%.

Heritage Concepts was, again, the most heavily traded stock today. Sherritt International Corp. was the second most heavily traded stock today, it finished up 7.76%.

The overall advance of the 300 was also helped by market heavy-weight Nortel, which was up $1.50 to $122.00. That helped the industrial products sub-index to a 1.29% gain.

Among the other sub-indices, seven of 14 finished the day up. Leading on the downside was communications and conglomerates, though, none of the groups declined more than 1%.

Overall 583 issues advanced, while 528 declined. Total volume was up slightly from recent weeks at 158 million shares.

The CDNX finished the day at 3,396.30, a gain of 18.27 points.

The Canadian dollar recovered slightly this morning from yesterday’s slump, but then headed down again and finished the day at a slight loss. The loonie closed at US67.27¢, compared to a close yesterday of US67.36¢.

In New York, both techs and blue-chips did well, though trading was slow. The Dow was up 38.09 at 11,182.74, the Nasdaq composite was up 242.27 points at 4,053.28, and the S&P 500 was up 2.34 points at 1,508.31.