By Jeff Sanford

(December 7 – 18:30 ET) – Toronto stocks couldn’t find much strength today. It TSE 300 opened down almost 100 points.

The composite index dropped as low as 9,129.81 during the day, but recovered slightly to close at 9,166.80, down 63.79 points from yesterday. A profit warning from Motorola delivered early in the day was responsible for a drop in the TSE’s tech-heavy industrial sub-index.

Six of the 14 sub-indices finished the day lower, led by industrial products, which was off 2.32%. Also down were merchandising, paper, metals, conglomerates and utilities — though none were down more than 1%.

On the upside, only golds and pipelinese finished over 1%.

Among individual issues, the market was just about split — 574 issues declined while 504 advanced. Volume was 147 million shares.

AXXENT Inc. a Canadian competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC), announced this week that Cisco Systems had designated it a “Cisco powered network provider.” Evidently that’s a good thing because it stirred up a lot of interest in the issue. Whatever the case, it was the most heavily traded stock of the day, over 8 million shares changed hands.

Nortel was the second most heavily traded issue, though, it was responsible for much of the loss in the industrial products sector. It finished the day off 4.08% at $58.80.

Some of the other techs did well, though. Research In Motion was up 4.49% to $137, and Celestica finished ahead 2.60% at $98.80.

Shaw’s announcement that it is buying up Moffat Communications sent Moffat shares soaring, up 8.68% to $35.05. Shaw stock finished down 2.86% at $34.

The energy companies, no surprise, did well today. Gulf Canada was up 2.26% at $6.80 and TransCanada Pipe was up 3.01% at $15.40. Compton Petroleum, a producer of natural gas, was ahead 4.59% at w$3.19.

The CDNX also finished the day off, finishing down 9.80 points at 2874.26. Volume was 38 million shares, with 268 issues advancing and 356 declining.

What’s up with the Canadian dollar? It seems investors have finally figured out the Canadian economy is working, and that it will even outperform our southern neighbors this year. After a big half a cent appreciation yesterday, the loonie kept climbing today. It closed at US65.65¢ — a gain of 0.29%.

In New York, more tech troubles led to a 43.85 points decline in the Nasdaq composite. It closed at 2,752.65. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 45.89 points to 10,618.49. The S&P 500 closed at 1,343.54, a drop of 7.92.