It’s a good day to be a bull today. Traders are buying aggressively today on the feeling that an economic recovery may come sooner rather than later.

The TSE 300 is up 136 points, or 1.8%, to 7,586.

Volume is strong at 129.5 million shares, with the buying trumping selling by more than five to one. Winners are beating losers more than two to one.

Safe havens, gold and pipelines, are the only groups that are down as traders pile into everything else. Techs are up better than 5%, thanks to news that memory chip prices rose 20% overnight in Asia.

Good feeling about a recovery generally has miners up 3%, media and conglomerates up bout 2% and financials up 1%. Oils are up, led by oil services, on news of a production agreement between Russia and OPEC.

Nortel Networks is leading the way higher, up better than 5.5% on more than 10 million shares. It is joined by heavy buying in Celestica, ATI, Certicom, Infowave, Pivotal, Descartes Systems, Microcell, Cinram and Cognicase.

The only stocks rivaling the techs for rally performance is the oil services up almost 5%. Trican Well Service is leading the way, up better than 9%.

The banks are being led higher by TD Bank, and the fund companies are strong, too. Bombardier and Noranda are also making gains.

So who’s losing on a day like today? Rio Alto is down as takeover speculation ebbs. TransCanada Pipelines is sliding, as are names such as Placer Dome, Finning, Meridian Gold, Nexfor, Sears Canada, Bell Canada International, CAE and Zenon Enviro.

With traders in a forgiving mood, Bank of Montreal has decided to confess its Enron Corp. exposure. BMO says that its total senior unsecured direct credit exposure to Enron is US$28 million, and indirect senior exposure to Enron-related entities totals US$75 million, of which US$49 million is secured.

The bank says that the total potential loss associated with these exposures is not considered material and does not impact the bank’s loan loss target for 2002.

Most traders poo-poo market milestones, but it can’t hurt investor sentiment to see the Dow above 10,000 and Nasdaq surpassing 2,000 today, with the Dow breaking its 200-day moving average.

Strong buying has the Dow Jones industrial average up 191 points at midday to 10,085. The Nasdaq composite is rallying even harder, gaining 72 points to 2,035. The S&P is up 21 points to 1,165.

Along with the all the other positive trade winds this morning, the market also received stronger than expected NAPM services data.

The CDNX is barely joining the rally today, gaining just five points to 3,086. Volume is robust at 15.4 million shares. Techs are up strongly, and gains in oils and miners are modest. Ibi Corp. is the top trader, dropping 17% to 5¢ on 604,000 shares.