By James Langton

(December 22 – 17:00 ET) – Traders came out in force for a bargain hunting rally ahead of the holiday season today, the last trading day for settlement in 2000.

The TSE 300 gained 170.22 points to close at 8,769.90. Volume was rather robust for a pre-holiday Friday at 153 million shares, with buyers carrying the trade by a margin of five to two over sellers. Winners outnumbered losers seven to five.

The rally was broad based, with just three sub-indices closing lower today. Industrials led the way, followed by mines, paper stocks and conglomerates. Gold was the only big loser, accompanied by tiny slides in real estate and pipelines.

Nortel Networks blazed the path higher, gaining 5% on almost 7 million shares. It was followed closely by big jumps in Research in Motion, Janna, Sierra Wireless, Pivotal, Celestica, and Exfo Electro.

Weyerhaeuser, Cambior and Uniforet led the paper stocks up. Blue chips BCE and Bombardier also posted gains today.

A big loser in the tech group was Cognos, which issued a warning about its growth prospects for fiscal 2002. The stock plunged 28% today.

Midday winner JDS Uniphase was also battered this afternoon after a Deutsche Bank analyst spoke negatively of its future prospects. The stock sold off aggressively, before mustering a defence. Nevertheless, it still closed down $3.90 to $64.50.

Other losers today include earnings warning victim Air Canada, insurers Sun Life and Canada Life, along with Dupont, BCE Emergis and Corby.

Manulife Financial closed flat after announcing that it will acquire Commercial Union’s Canadian life insurance business for an undisclosed price.

Also this afternoon TD Bank said it would sell some of its real estate to Cadillac Fairview for $1.28 billion, including the Pacific Centre in Vancouver, and the Eaton Centre and Toronto-Dominion Centre in Toronto.

In New York, volume was strong on the way to a Santa Claus rally.

The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 147.28 points to 10,635.56. The Nasdaq composite jumped 176.93 points to close at 2,517.05, and the S&P 500 added 31.11 points to finish at 13,05.97.

IBM led the way today up 9.1% on positive analyst comments. HP and Microsoft were also up. J.P. Morgan led the banks higher.

The CDNX relented and joined today’s rally, adding 90.42 points to 2,783.24 on heavy volume of 83.3 million shares. Tech issues led the bounce, up 6.6% on the day, followed by strong gains in both oils and mines. Cantex Mine Development Corp was the top trader closing down 12% to 15¢ on 4 million shares.

Looking toward next week, trading should be quiet with the TSE closed both Monday and Tuesday. Statistics Canada is also taking next week off.

In the U.S., Monday is a holiday, but on Tuesday consumer confidence data will be out, as will oil inventories. On Wednesday, natural gas inventories will be released, and so will the leading indicators and existing home sales.

Friday will brings the consumer sentiment report. None of these reports are expected to have much impact, although energy inventories will be closely watched by some traders.

Forget all that and enjoy the holidays — and have a Happy New Year!