As expected, the U.S. Memorial Day holiday has given many Canadian traders a long weekend, too.

At midday, the S&P/TSX index is down just eight points to 7,659 on just 55.5 million shares.

Buying volume is outpacing the selling by about four to three. Market breadth is negative however, with losers outnumbering winners by 23:21.

Golds are the weakest group today, as they give back some of their recent rally. There’s also some selling in materials, real estate, telecoms and utilities. Against this, there’s some buying in techs, and a bit of buying consumer stocks. But it’s hard to read much into such a light session.

Placer Dome is leading the golds down, dropping 7.4% on huge volume of 3.7 million shares. This selling comes following news of its surprise bid for AurionGold over the weekend. Some of this weakness is spilling over to Barrick Gold, Bema Gold and Kinross Gold.

Other scraps of news are also sparking some weakness. Compton Petroleum’s weak results have it down 2.2% so far today.

News of Shoppers Drug Mart’s planned share offering has given it a 7% haircut.

Hurricane Hydrocarbons dropped 8.4% on reports that it has had to cut production in its Kazakhstan subsidiary.

On the upside, there’s strength in miners such as Noranda, Falconbridge, Inco and Wheaton River Minerals.

With no real direction to trading, there are notable gains in stocks that begin with the letter “C”. That means rallies in unrelated stocks such as Canadian 88, CAE, Cognos, Cott and CI.

In other news, the board of Biophage Pharma have appointed Elie Farah as chief executive officer, taking over from Dr. Rosemonde Mandeville, who will remain chairman, president and chief scientific officer.

In small cap land, the S&P/TSX Venture index is up two and a half points to 1,227. Volume is strong there at 21.3 million shares. The top trader is ECU Silver Mining Inc, which is flat at 9¢ on 3.3 million shares.