Stocks are meandering through another directionless trading session with no major economic or corporate news to guide them. The S&P/TSX composite index is down just seven points at midday to 8,603.

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, in a speech given this morning, managed not to roil markets with his comments. The only data in the U.S., consumer confidence, was weaker than expected.

At least there’s some volume in today’s trade. So far, almost 200 million shares have changed hands on the TSX, with the downside swamping the upside by a margin of about two to one. Market breadth is much narrower, with losers outnumbering winners 21″17.

Health care stocks are the weakest group today, down 2% so far. Techs and industrials are down a bit, too.

There is strength in golds, up 2.5%. Materials and utilities have made small gains, too.

A big chunk of the volume is the result of a single trade in Cambior. It is down 2.7% with 36 million shares changing hands, after it announced that Jipangu has sold 10,422,183 common shares of Cambior and has monetized its remaining 23 million shares through the sale of exchangeable debentures. The transactions are scheduled to close on Feb. 27.

There’s lots of other action in the gold group, most of it to the upside. Wheaton River has gained 4.5% in heavy volume. There’s also buying in Bema Gold, Golden Star Resources, Pan American Silver, Newmont Mining and Glamis Gold.

Dundee Precious Metals Inc. has jumped 9% on news that Dundee Bancorp has agreed to acquire from Dundee Wealth Management Inc., 925,000 shares of Dundee Precious for cash consideration of $27.8 million.

Barrick Gold Corp. announced that it plans to bring four mines into production by 2006, boosting output by 40% by 2007.

Nortel is also adding some downside volume. It is sliding another 1.7% today on volume of 11.7 million shares. ATI is down 1.3%, and there is weakness in Cedara Software, Mitec Telecom, Tundra Semi, Sierra Wireless and Certicom.

Forbes Medi-Tech is leading the biotechs down, dropping 7.8%. Angiotech is down a similar amount.

Financials are heavy traders today. Royal Bank is leading the way, gaining 1.6% on strong volume of 2.2 million shares, as traders gird for its latest earnings news.

However, Bank of Montreal is down 1% on news that net income for the first quarter rose to $532 million, compared with net income of $399 million in the first quarter of 2003.

National Bank, CIBC and TD Bank are each down about 0.7%, and Manulife has dropped 0.8% on news that shareholders of John Hancock Financial Services, Inc. overwhelmingly endorsed the proposed merger with Manulife Financial today.

There is also weakness in Domtar, Alcan, CP Rail and PetroKazakhstan.

Molson is rallying back today, gaining 1.1% in active trading. There are also some gains on volume for EnCana, Petro Canada, Canadian Superior Energy, BCE and Sino-Forest.

In other earnings news, George Weston Ltd. reported net earnings for the fourth quarter of 2003 increased $21 million to $252 million, from $23 -million in 2002 and increased 15% to $792 million year to date.

On the M&A front, Kensington Energy has entered into an acquisition agreement for a private Alberta-based oil and gas company for a total consideration of $24.8 million, including the assumption of $2.0 million of net debt.

In New York, markets have been meandering around the unchanged level all day. At midday, the Dow Jones industrial average is down 22 points at 10,588. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index is essentially unchanged at 2,008.

The S&P/TSX Venture index has dropped six ticks to 1859. Volume is on the light side though, at 39.3 million shares. Spider Resources Inc. is leading the trade, down a penny to 25¢ on almost 2 million shares.