Early buying momentum quickly melted away today, leaving the TSE 300 down 74 points to 7,796.

Volume is average at 77.5 million shares, with the selling surpassing buying by two to one. Losers outnumber winners by five to four.

The selloff is pretty uniform, as almost every sector is down on profit taking. Fund companies and engineering firms are the only sub-sectors showing gains, everything else is down about 1%. Banks, chemicals, techs, miners and utilities are leading the way lower.

Nortel Networks is down almost 3% in active trading. The tech leader is joined on the downside by Zarlink, Cryptologic, and Bell Canada International. Celestica is bucking the trend after announcing its big new contract with NEC. ATI is holding up, too.

The disaster of the day is Xplore Technologies down 62%, as it resumed trading after its business was called into question yesterday.

But it is hardly a tech-led market today, Nortel has plenty of blue chip company on the downside. Losers include Argentina-exposed Bank of Nova Scotia. BCE, Brascan, Clarica, Franco Nevada, Cott, CanWest, and Noranda are all down.

The day’s big winner so far is Imax Corp., up 54% in active trading after it announced major debt retirements.

Other gainers include technology plays such as Hummingbird, Wi-Lan, Pangeo Pharma, Ballard Power, Hemosol, along with old economy names, Stelco, West Jet and Sobeys.

In business news, Promax Energy has completed the first sale of its non-core assets in its south-eastern Alberta properties for $914,000.

Wall Street averages began the day with modest gains, but have since slipped into a broad selloff, too. At midday the Dow Jones industrial average is down 38 points to 10,158.

The Nasdaq composite index has been up and down but it is currently clinging to a seven point gain at 2,044. The S&P 500 is down four points to 1,161.

The S&P/CDNX index is posting a small loss, down four points to 1,085. Volume is strong at 20.2 million shares. Hydromet Environmental is leading the trade for a change, flat at 8¢ on 2.6 million shares.