By James Langton

(February 22 – 13:15 ET) – Markets opened sharply lower this morning on continued weakness in tech stocks, but they are bouncing back at midday. The TSE 300 is down 25 points to 8,035. It opened below 8,000.

Volume is strong today at 85.5 million shares, with an even split between buyers and sellers. Breadth is negative however with losers outnumbering winners about eight to five.

The sector split is even today, with buying in pipelines, industrials and merchandisers. Consumer stocks are weakest, followed by financials, conglomerates and utilities.

Nortel Networks is bouncing back today, up about 5% on heavy volume of 10.4 million shares. Early weakness has given way to bargain hunting in a number of he world’s big techs, including Nortel rival Cisco Systems and Intel Corp.

Joining the Nortel bouce are names such as Alcatel and Cognos climbing off earlier lows. The buying is selective though, with the list of big losers including Research in Motion, CGI, Open Text, Ballard Power and biotechs, Biovail and NPS Allelix.

Other notable losers include Bombardier, off 4.6%, Northstar Energy, GM and Maverick Tube.

Today’s winners include a selection of old economy names such as Weston, Smithfield, Weyerhaeuser and Canadian Utilities.

As noted above the biotechs are decidedly weak, taking down the consumer group. The other major weakness is financials. The banks are all sliding in heavy trading.

Yesterday’s consumer inflation report in the U.S. threatened to stall further rate cuts there, and the retail sales numbers reported here today are having the same impact. Economists are now unsure whether the Bank of Canada will cut rates in a couple of weeks.

All the banks are down, except Scotia. Bank of Montreal is leading the way off almost 4%, TD is down 2% and Royal Bank is off 1% in heavy trading ahead of its earnings release tomorrow. The insurers are taking up some of the slack within the financial group, but not enough to keep it in the black.

National Bank of Canada today announced its results for the first quarter ended January 31. It reported income before goodwill charges of $143.3 million, or 71¢ a share, up 17.3% from the corresponding quarter of 2000.

In New York stocks have been on a choppy ride. After opening slightly higher, they sold off aggressively, and have since recovered from the lows to trade down modestly.

The Dow Jones industrial average is down 59 points to 10,467. The Nasdaq composite is off 29 points to 2,239. The S&P 500 has dropped seven points to 1,247. There’s a lack of direction to trading, with mild battles waged between bargain hunters and profit worriers keeping the market in a relatively narrow range.

The CDNX is sliding again today, off 23 points to 3,087. Volume is about average at 17.6 million shares.

Techs are leading the way down, with modest slides evident in both mines and oils. New name Net Scout Capital Corp. is the top trader at 60¢ on 2.2 million shares. Spider Resources is the top real trader, dropping 33% to 6¢ on 602,000 shares.