By James Langton
(March 2 – 13:00 ET) – Stocks picked up this morning, right where they left off yesterday, rallying strongly. The TSE 300 is up 104 points this morning to 9,515.50 on heavy volume of 139.4 million shares. Volume was 7:5 in favour of buyers, but even between advancers and decliners. New highs are overwhelming new lows, 7:2.
The gains are coming from technology and energy stocks. The industrials are up almost 3%, joined by the pipelines. Utilities, real estate and conglomerates are up too. Consumer products and golds are leading the four TSE groups trading on the downside at midday.
Laidlaw remains the hottest trade on the street as some of yesterday’s speculative air surrounding the stock seeps back out, It is down 3.5% on 5.8 million shares. Rumours of a bid from Onex had it up heavily yesterday.
Talk of stabilizing oil prices out of a London conference has the pipeline stocks up. TransCanada Pipelines and Ranger Oil are up 3% to 5% in heavy trading.
The heavy hitters though are the technology stocks. Nortel Networks is up 3%. Celestica has added 7.5% on 1.2 million shares after pricing its new offering. Research in Motion, Sierra Wireless, MGI Software and Ballard Power are all up strongly in active trading.
These gains in technology stocks are coming on some internal rotation within the sector from software to hardware. Toronto is seeing some of that trend as yesterday’s darlings become today’s dogs. 724 Solutions, Infowave Software, Wi-Lan and Delrina are all down sharply although on lighter volume. TLC is also taking a beating, down almost 30% at midday.
The financials have been remarkably quiet today following some strong earnings out of CIBC. The bank reported $1.06 per share, ahead of analysts’ juiced expectations of $1 per share. CIBC stock is up a little, BMO is the strongest bank coming off very beaten down levels. Trading in Mackenzie Financial has slowed down, but its still more active than usual. The firm’s stock though is down again today as takeover speculation cools.
The small caps are joining the buying frenzy too. The CDNX is up 67 points to 3,974 in active trading. The CDNX index is on the verge of doubling after just over three months of operation, it opened at 2,000 in late November. Prime Spot Media is the hottest stock, up 6¢ to 14¢ on volume of 2.9 million shares.
In New York the trade has been choppy. Yesterday’s big run-up in semi-conductors is selling off but the money is reallocating within the tech sector for the most part. A huge IPO from Palm Computing is driving the hype, but its virtually a wash on Nasdaq. At midday the Nasdaq is more or less unchanged at 4,783. The Dow is up 23 pints to 10,160 and the S&P has added a single point to 1,380.