September was a brutal month for TSX investors. The latest numbers from the TSX show that the S&P/TSX composite index lost 431 points, or 6.5%, in the month to close at 6,180.

The pain was felt in each of the blue chip, mid-cap and small cap sub-indicies.

The top trader in the month was Nortel Networks, which dropped 86¢ to 79¢ on 519 million shares traded. Bombardier was the second most popular issue, down $2.39 to $4.36, with 239.4 million shares changing hands.

The slide in prices has also hampered the value traded on the TSX. Through the first nine months of 2002, the total value traded is down 12% to $2.6 trillion, and the daily average value traded is off 11.3% to $487.5 billion. The market’s volume is up however. The daily volume average is up 21%, and year to date volume has risen 22%.

The TSX’s listings are more or less flat year over year at 1,646. It has seen 55 IPOs so far this year, up from 39 in the same period last year. new listings are also up to 76 this year, from 69 last year.