By James Langton

(April 16 – 13:00 ET) – Markets opened lower today on earnings jitters, but have been drifting higher throughout the morning. At midday, the TSE 300 is down 49 points to 7,786.

The trading action is rather light at 43 million shares, but this is to be expected following a long weekend. The down volume has a five to four edge over up volume, and losers have a nine to eight edge over winners.

On a sector basis, half the TSE’s 14 sub-indices are down and half are up. The industrials are the only group with any notable selling, down about 3%. Only gold and energy are showing much resistance.

Nortel Networks is leading the techs down on little more than sentiment that last week’s rally was overdone. The stock is down 6% today on 3 million shares. It is joined by similar declines in Pivotal, C-MAC, Research in Motion, Celestica, JDS Uniphase and Alcatel. Axcan Pharma is down notably, too.

The upside is a mixed bag, led by old economy names. Bombardier has gained just 7¢ in heavy trading, following the announcement that it has finalized a $2.4 billion contract with Air Wisconsin for 75 Canadair Regional Jet Series 200 aircraft.

Other winners today include Hurricane Hydrocarbons, Torstar, North American Palladium, Lassonde, Maple Leaf Foods, Sears Canada, Burlington Resources and Noranda. A couple of techs, Zi Corp. and Open Text, are also up.

One old economy name that’s taking a thumping is Post Energy, down 5.5% in heavy trading. The firm announced that its president and CEO, Tim Hunt, will be the CEO and a director of Exploreco, a company created through its merger with Ketch Energy Ltd. Ketch is up a little on the news.

In other business news, Encal Energy Ltd. and Calpine Corp. announced today that the share exchange ratio for their proposed merger has been calculated as 0.1493 exchangeable shares of Calpine Canada Holdings Ltd. for each existing Encal common share.

In New York, trading has been similarly sluggish. The Dow Jones industrial average is currently down just 21 points to 10,106. The Nasdaq composite index is off 27 points to 1,934. The S&P 500 has slipped three points to 1,180. Weakness in financial earnings and some trepidation over this week’s coming tech earnings seems to be behind the light selloff.

The CDNX is bucking the trend, up seven points to 2,981. Volume is light at 15 million shares. Oils and techs are up a bit, mines are down. Meteor Creek Resources is up 17% on 859,460 shares.