By Jeff Sanford

(August 8 – 16:30 ET) – The TSE packed on a dramatic 291.17 points today as traders played catch-up to American markets. The TSE 300 closed at 10,858.79, a jump of 2.76%.

The lift came mostly from the big inter-listed tech stocks, which did well on buoyant U.S. markets Monday. The TSE industrial products sub-index ended the day up 4.98%. That gain was led by Nortel, which gained $6.10 on the day to close at $117.65. JDS Uniphase also had a good day, gaining $6.25 to close at $178.40. Research in Motion was up $4.85 to $83.45.

SierraWireless, which rose $7.05 to $97.00, and Celestica Inc, which moved $7.72 higher, also did well. Exfo-Electro did well, too, climbing $5.25 to $85.25.

Traders can’t seem to get enough of Heritage Concepts. Company officials were in Washington today presenting their facial recognition software to the U.S. government. Once again it was the most heavily traded stock in Toronto with 12 million shares traded — far ahead of second-place Nortel’s 6 million shares. Heritage finished the day up 31%.

Most of the other sub-indices were also up on the day. Consumer products and pipelines were both up over 2%. Biotechnology stocks gave a boost to the consumer products sector, which was up 2.87 percent. In that sector, Biovail Corp rose $5.65 to $100 and QLT Inc. gained $4.50 to finish at $119.00. Only the communications, merchandising and utilities sub-indices ended the day down.

Other heavily traded stocks were BCE, down 1.66%; Sun Life, up 3.5%; TransCanada, up 3.88% and CAE, up 4.11%.

Last Friday’s negative earnings report on continues to affect Xillix. It dropped another 14% today.

Volume was relatively strong for a mid-summer trading session with over 138 million shares trading hands. Overall, 569 issues advanced, while 518 declined and 267 remained unchanged.

The CDNX finished the day down 21.09 points at 3,346.81.

The loonie closed at US67.19¢ today, compared to Friday’s US67.14¢. on Friday. Even though it was an advance, it was on extremely thin volume. Traders attributed the weak interest to the negative employment news released last week. The positive productivity news from the United States didn’t have any effect on the currency.

It did have an effect in the U.S. though. That surprisingly good productivity punched the Dow up 109.88 points to close at 10,976.89. The news didn’t have as much effect on the Nasqaq composite, which ended the day down 14.44 points at 3,848.55. The S&P 500 finished the day at 1482.80.