By Stewart Lewis
(May 23 – 13:00 ET) – Like yesterday, the early morning futures market did not provide a dependable omen for tech stocks. They’re down again today.
As usual, the TSE 300 composite index’s most active stocks today are Nortel and BEC. Both issues are down at midday. Nortel has dropped $2.25 to $76.60. BCE fell 15¢ to $33.65. Another Canadian tech darling, JDS Uniphase is also in a rut today. It dropped $7.25 to $55.45 in morning trading.
The TSE, itself, has dropped overall. It’s down 122.32 to 9170.82 on volume of 46 million shares. Decliners outnumber advancing issues 556 to 323. Unchanged issues number 227.
South of the border stocks were mixed. Analysts are blaming anxiety about the U.S. Federal Reserve’s next interest rate move as the culprit for paucity of conviction.
At midday, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 10 points to 10552, moving in and out of negative territory throughout the morning. The NASDAQ composite index fell 10.60 to 3353.60.
The Canadian dollar opened slightly lower today. There’s little economic data on the horizon to provide new direction. The Canadian dollar was at US66.81¢ today from US66.83¢ during the previous session.