The unofficial holiday has made for a quiet trading day at the TSE. By midday, the TSE 300 is up just 23 points to 7875, on sparse volume of 61 million shares. Buyers are outweighing sellers by about four to three. Market breadth is narrower, but still positive at 25:22 in favour of winners over losers.

Energy stocks are strong today on expectations of higher oil prices due to escalating tensions in the Middle East. Golds are enjoying a flight to safety bid, and there’s some strength in utilities. Healthcare stocks are weak today, as are miners and telecoms.

The traders that did make it in today continue to move lots of BCE stock around, with 2.7 million shares changing hands so far. The price is more or less unchanged however.

Golds are gaining today, led by senior players in that space, Barrick and Placer Dome, both up about 3.5% today. Smaller producers, Kinross, Glamis Gold, Goldcorp and Franco Nevada are rallying too.

The energy group is stronger on another grim weekend in the Arabian oil patch. Suncor Energy is leading the way higher, along with gains in Husky Energy and Precision Drilling.

On the downside, QLT is leading the way, off more than 10% after a leading health care firm in the U.S. decided not to extend coverage of QLT’s Visudyne procedure.

Techs are mixed today, with Celestica down 3% and Nortel Networks up better than 3%. CGI Group is down notably too.

The other big losers are a mixed bag of venerable Canadian firms, including CN Rail, Air Canada, Canadian Tire, Four Seasons, Quebecor, Falconbridge and Onex.

In earnings news, ID Biomedical recorded a net loss of $14.7 million for 2001, as compared with net earnings of $4.6 million for the year 2000.

In other business news, Sobeys has completed the sale of all of the assets of its SERCA Foodservice operations to SYSCO Corporation. The net after-tax proceeds to Sobeys from the transactions will be approximately $360 million which will be applied primarily toward debt reduction.

In New York, trading has been thin but decidedly more negative. At midday the Dow is down 115 points to 10289. Nasdaq is off by 30 points to 1828. The S&P is down by 12 points to 1136.

The S&P/CDNX Composite Index is siding with New York today, down two points to 1,185. Volume is on the light side there too at 14.9 million shares. High Point Energy is the day’s top trader, up 5% to 63¢ on 674,500 shares.