By Jeff Sanford

(March 2 – 17:30 ET) – It was another roller coaster day for Toronto stocks today. The TSE 300 opened down, climbed through the morning and was trading at a slight gain in the early afternoon. Those gains melted as stocks plunged steeply in the late afternoon, selling into the close.

The TSE 300 finished the day down 96.91 points at 8,006.95, a decline of 1.20%.

Most of the downward pressure came from tech stocks, which were hammered today. The industrial products sub-index fell 4.44% over the course of the day. Selling pressure also came from consumer products, gold, and utilities, which were all down more than 1%.

On the upside: merchandising and oil were the only two sub-indices up over 1%.

Overall, six sectors were up, six down and two finished unchanged. Market breadth among individual issue, though, was positive with 605 advancers and 462 decliners. Market volume was 169.9 million shares.

Nortel Networks, the day’s most heavily traded issue, dropped 6.13% today to close at $26.80. Bombardier, the second most heavily traded issue, was also off today. It fell 5.36% to close at $21.02.

360networks issued guidance that it wouldn’t escape the slowdown in the tech sector. That news sent shares in the company tumbling 10.76% to $10.70. ATI finished off 7.55% at $6. C-Mac was off 7.78% at $36.15 and Descartes was down 4.49% at $20 while JDS was off 8.635 at $41.80.

Celestica managed to bund the trend and advancecd 3.07% to close at $70.60. Burntsand Inc climbed 8.20% to close at $3.30.

Derlan Industries Inc., a manufacturer of parts for the aerospace and pump industries, was up 7.03% today on good earnings news. It closed at $1.37;

Sun Life took a hit, closing down 6.76% at $32.40 in heavy trading. Most of the rest of the financials were either up slightly or unchanged.

The CDNX gained 27.23 points to close at 3,091.37 today. Volume was relatively light at 35 million shares. Market breadth was positive, with 248 advancers and 234 decliners.

The loonie recovered somewhat from its plunge yesterday. It advanced over a quarter cent to close at US64.82¢.

In the New York., tech worries knocked the Nasdaq composite down another 65.70 points to 2,117.67. The S&P 500 was also down, dropping 7.18 points to close at 1,234.05. The Dow Jones industrial average managed to scraped out a slight gain today, advancing 16.17 points to close at 10,466.31.