By James Langton
(September 18 – 13:00 ET) – The Nortel Networks roller coaster is sliding hard today and wrenching the TSE down with it. Nortel has dropped about 6% this morning in a global tech selloff, and as a result the TSE 300 is down 196 points at midday to 10,867.
Volume is average at 80 million shares, with a slight edge to buyers. Decliners outnumber the advancers about 17:13.
With Nortel taking a drubbing the entire industrials group is down about 4%. The tech selloff comes on the heels of profit concerns at global companies in general and techs in particular. Alcatel led a selloff in European networkers, and any stock with large European operations is down on the continually dropping euro. Rising oil prices are fueling profit concerns, too, with oil around US$35.
Following Nortel down are the Alcatel and JDS Uniphase exchangeables, joined by BCE Emergis, 724 Solutions, Microcell, Perle Systems and other tech traders Ballard Power and Biovail.
Nortel is the top trader today, followed by Rogers which is down 2% on 3.7 million shares. Videotron is flat in active trading.
BCE is leading the buying resistance, up 1.3% despite talk of regulator scrutiny of its deal to takeover CTV, a hurdle that must be cleared before its proposed merger with Thomson Corp. can take place.
Only the utilities and oil and gas sectors are up at midday. Everything else is weak, particularly financials, golds and consumers. Husky Energy continues to enjoy the energy sector runup, gaining 2.8% so far today in active trading. Petro Canada is strong too. Also bouncing are NPS Alllelix, QLT, Sherritt and Jean Coutou.
Nelvana is another one of the happy stories of the day too, up 13% on news of its takeover by Corus.
Lionore Mining is up 12.5% on 2.7 million shares. There’s no news from the firm, and little substantive net gossip to explain the run.
Among the financials, all the banks and insurers are down, except Scotiabank. Most of the fund companies are weak, too.
Cinram is down 24 % in active trading on news of an earnings warning.
At midday stocks are weak in New York. The Dow is off 68 points to 10,859. The Nasdaq composite has slipped 67 points to 3,768. The S&P 500 is down 11 ticks to 1455.
Microsoft is sliding, along with Nortel and JDS Uniphase. AT&T and British Telecom are also weak on news of an alliance between them. J.P. Morgan is pushing the financials down. Fed chairman Alan Greenspan attempted to sooth markets this morning with some positive comments on the prospects for continued technological innovation.
The CDNX is joining the selloff today. It is down 20 points to 3,670 on volume of 20.3 million shares. Techs are leading the way down, and mines are soft, but oils are neutral. Tathacus Resources Ltd is the top trader, up 36% to $10.90 on 1.3 million shares.