By Jeff Sanford
(October 4 – 17:45 ET) – Although it opened down this morning the TSE rose steadily through the day, especially through the afternoon. The TSE 300 composite index ended up closing with a gain of 68.35 points at 10,524.70.
Uncertainty about earnings continues to keep traders on edge, leaving the market without any real direction Among the sub-indices, seven finished down, six up and one unchanged.
Leading on the downside were the oil and paper sectors. They fell 2.19% and 4.59% respectively. Within the paper sector, the two biggest names were down. Abitibi, was down 9.61%, while Domtar lost 3.12%. There was no news on the big drops in either issue even though Abitibi was the most heavily traded issue on the day.
Oils slipped on a drop in the price of crude. Gulf Canada continued to seesaw. It finished down 2.04% today.
The biotechs dragged consumer products down. QLT was off a massive 12.95%, continuing yesterday’s selloff.
Industrial products and financial services led on the upside. The techs did well today. Nortel gained $1.05 to close at $95.10, while Corel was up anther 2.26%. C-Mac gained 8.71% and JDS Uniphase put on 6.05%. However, Descartes Systems was down 3.46%.
All the big banks stocks did well. TD and Royal led with advances of 2.36% and 2.60% respectively. Manulife also did well, rising by 4.47%.
The CDNX was off six points at 3,499.68.
The loonie recovered slightly today, climbing 0.47% to close at US66.81¢, up from US66.50¢ yesterday.
In the U.S., the Nadaq turned around a three-day losing streak on some strength in chip and Internet stocks. The Nasdaq was up 67.27 points at 3,523.10. The Dow closed at 10,784.48, up 64.74 points, and the S&P 500 was up 7.86 points at 1,434.32.