Toronto stocks are holding on to a 20-point gain at midday, pushing the S&P/TSX index to 6634. Volume is weak at 59.1 million shares, with buying
outweighing the selling by a margin of seven to four. Market breadth is about equally split between winners and losers.

Golds are leading the way higher, with a 4% gain today. There is also some strength in telecoms, industrials and materials. There is weakness in health care stocks and diversifieds. Most other sectors are registering small gains.

Placer Dome is leading the rally in gold stocks, with a 2.7% gain on strong volume of more than 2.4 million shares. Barrick is powering higher too, but the big percentage moves are in small cap names such as NovaGold, Kinross, Meridian Gold, Glamis Gold, Goldcorp and Agnico Eagle.

Apart from the golds, the other big rallying point remains Bombardier. It is up another 3.3% on strong volume of 5.9 million shares.

There are some modest gains in the tech and telecom spaces with gains in names such as Celestica, JDS Uniphase, Nortel Networks, Telus and Rogers Communications. BCE is down a little though. So are ATI, Research in Motion and Biovail.

Bank stocks are making slight gains, led by Royal Bank and Bank of Nova Scotia.

Weakness is showing in Teck, ARC Energy, Pacific & Western Credit, and Forzani Group.

In earnings news, International Utility Structures reported that its net loss for the third quarter of fiscal 2002 was $10.1 million, compared with net loss of $3.2 million for the same period last year.

CFS International’s consolidated net earnings for the second quarter in 2002 is $1,658,754, compared with net earnings of $1,230,462 for the same quarter in 2001.

The S&P/TSX Venture index is little changed today. It’s down less than a point to 1008. Volume remains weak at 8.3 million shares. William Multi-Tech Inc. is
the top trader. It’s flat at 1¢ on news that it has appointed turnaround specialist Peter Hooper as president.

In New York, a strong opening quickly evapourated. At midday the Dow Jones industrial index is down 87 points to 8786. The S&P 500 has dropped seven points to 934. Nasdaq composite index is down 15 points to 1366.