By James Langton

(July 6 – 13:00 ET) – Simple profit taking seems to be slugging the market this morning. The TSE 300 is down 148 points to 10,176. Volume is weak again today at just 60.3 million shares. Decliners are outnumbering advancers about 6:5. Despite the negative tone, volume is still about 5:4 in favour of buyers.

By sector the market is split evenly between winners and losers, but the only sector that matters this morning is tech and that’s down sharply, more than 3%. As usual Nortel Networks is the stock at the eye of the storm. Nortel is down 3.6% on almost 3 million shares. There’s no news on the firm, just aggressive profit-taking that seems to be slugging traders.

Joining Nortel are a host of techs, software stocks, cable stocks, and a couple of old school sectors, mines and financials. JDS Uniphase is down heavily after a good morning in European trading. It is joined by Delrina, BCE Emergis, 724 Solutions and PRI Automation.

MDSI mobile is getting slugged, down about 24%, after it warned that second-quarter revenues will be lower than expected as major telecom clients delay purchases.

The upside is weak, with most of the gains in oils, oil service and transports, a reverse of the past couple of days trading. Renaissance is bouncing. Bombardier is up strongly, as is Abitibi. Trimark is up yet again to $27, its proposed takeout price.

On the tech front, Research in Motion is up on good words by CIBC. Ballard Power and Alcatel are both strong, too.

In other business news Videotron is reporting a third-quarter profit, 17¢ a share, up from a loss of 21¢ a share in the same quarter last year. CanWest Global Communications Corp. has received CRTC permission to keep the assets of WIC Western International Communications Ltd. There was speculation that it would be forced into some divestitures.

TD Bank Financial Group has named Ed Clark as president and chief operating officer. Clark will now oversee both retail and commercial banking operations.

In New York stocks are mixed with computer makers leading the way lower, there is some bounce among the rest of the techs, though. Also hitting stocks was a 10:00 ET report that ran contrary to recent signs of slowing. U.S. Factory Orders rose 4.1% in May, its biggest gain in more than seven years.

On that news the Dow is off 37 points to 10,446. The NASDAQ composite is up five to 3,868. The S&P 500 is flat at 1,446.

The CDNX is down this morning, off 23 points to 34,18. Volume is lighter than usual at 17 million shares. Oils are leading the way down, joined by mines. Techs are holding up. Guodong Capital Corp is the hottest trader, up 100% to 20¢ on 2.2 million shares.