By James Langton

(September 8 – 13:00 ET) – Stocks are sliding hard today on the heels of a Nortel Networks selloff. At midday the TSE 300 is down 174 points to 10,887. Volume is rather light at 76 million shares, about 2:1 in favour of sellers. Decliners outnumber advancers about 7:4.

Nortel is the story of the day, off about 3.6% on a market leading volume of 3.3 million shares. It has pushed the industrials group down 3%, and the whole market along with it. Nortel is weak along with rivals Lucent and Cisco on the feeling that the major telecommuncations companies will slow their purchases of equipment.

This Nortel slide has bled into the rest of the market, pushing down everything but golds, mines and financials. The pockets of resistance are small though, with declines in utilities, consumer stocks, paper, and everything else.

The big losers include high-priced techs such as Research in Motion, Alcatel, 724 Solutions, GSI Lumonics, Exfo Electro and Ballard Power. BCE and Methanex are down sharply, too.

Not everything is off today, though. Among the winners, Mytec is on the way up in active trading. Bombardier is defiantly positive. Among tech companies, Pivotal and Biovail are up. Chapters is popping nicely, as are gold miners, TVX and Franco-Nevada.

Among the financials, Sun Life is the big loser after PaineWebber lowered its rating on the stock to neutral from attractive and cut its price target. The firm made the call on valuation and it has hit the stock. The banks also opened the day down, but have recovered nicely through the trading day.

Another big upside mover is Unican Security Systems Ltd., up 30% after announcing it has established a committee to find a buyer for the company.

In new York, stocks are sliding, too. The Dow is off 65 points to 11,195. The Nasdaq composite is down 77 points to 4,020 and the S&P 500 is off nine points to 1, 493.

Weakness in Cisco and Lucent is afflicting much of the technology sector today. The same fear of lower growth is also filtering into retailers. Oils are down ahead of this weekend’s OPEC meetings, and chemicals remain weak, too.

Only the CDNX is resisting the selloff. It is up 15 points to 3,630 on decent volume of 21 million shares. Mines are leading the way up with minimal resistance from techs and oils. Genoil Inc. is the top trader up 32% to 25¢ on 2.5 million shares.