By James Langton

(January 9 – 13:00 ET) – Toronto stocks faced a broad-based decline this morning, with techs at the head of the charge.

At midday, the TSE 300 is off 89 points to 8,582. Volume is on the light side again today at 56 million shares, and it favours sellers by a margin of more than three to two. Losers outnumber winners five to four.

Apart from some slight resistance in pipelines, every sub-index on the TSE is either flat or down. Techs, golds and financials are the biggest losers.

As usual Nortel Networks is the top trader, down about 2.6% on 4.5 million shares. The stock seemed to shake off the gloom surrounding the mobile telecom stocks in the wake of Nokia’s disappointing results. However Nortel has since been caught up in tech spending concerns again as analysts began downgrading various companies. The networking giant is leading a host of techs on the downside, including Alcatel, Research in Motion, QLT and Angiotech.

But the losses are evenly shared today including such old economy firms as Weston, Imperial Oil, Weyerhaeuser, and Burlington Resources.

Just about every financial stock on the TSE is down today, including banks and insurers. Only U.S. exchangeables Merrill Lynch and Legg Mason are offering any resistance.

The most active financial issue is Mackenzie, down 1.3% on 1.5 million shares, as investors may be getting a little impatient for an alternative deal, following the collapse of C.I.’s hostile bid.

There are some isolated bright spots in Toronto today. Descartes Systems leads a handful of techs that include Janna, Pivotal, Cognos and Ballard Power. Biovail is gaining, too.

The energy service stocks such as Weatherford Oil Services, Ensign and TransCanada PipeLines are up, as are Winpak, Lorus and Gulf Canada.

In New York the trading is a light again today. At midday, the Dow Jones industrial average is off 35 points to 10,586. The Nasdaq composite is holding up well, currently up 33 points to 2,429. The S&P 500 has added six ticks to 1,302.

Telecom stocks are weak, particularly the mobile phone makers, but investor uncertainty seems to be keeping a cautious and indecisive tone to the action.

Over on the CDNX, sellers have the upper hand, pushing the index down 13 points to 2,928 on light volume of 12.2 million shares. Oils are down almost 1%, followed by sliding mines, while techs are actually up. Unique Broadband is the top trader, up 7% to $2.37 on 433,535 shares.