By James Langton

(November 22 – 13:00 ET) – Markets are getting hammered again today. The TSE 300 is off 183 points to 8,831, a drop of 2%.

Volume is relatively strong at 78 million shares, but favours sellers over buyers by more than five to one. Losers outnumber winners about five to two.

The only group that’s up today is gold, as some investors rush to it for safety. Everything else is down and down heavily.

Industrials, consumers and media stocks are each down about 3%, while financials are off 2.4%. The old economy stocks aren’t providing much support either. A confluence of factors including uncertainty surrounding the U.S. election uncertainty, continued unrest in the Middle East, and creeping profits fears concerning techs and telecoms are weighing on the market.

A sure sign of the gloom and doom is Nortel Networks. Yesterday the networking giant gave analysts what they wanted to hear, and received positive comments in response. Today Nortel is down 2.6% on 4.7 million shares.

Following in its wake is any name with a whiff of speculative air about it. Research in Motion, Sierra Wireless, Geac, Pivotal, Janna, Cognos, Certicom, Ballard Power and biotechs, Biovail and Angiotech are all down sharply.

This woeful tech action is dropping Nasdaq Canada below yesterday’s starting point. The index is off 33 points this morning to 976 on 22.3 million shares. JDS Uniphase is the top trader there, down 1.4% on 9.9 million shares.

Financials are down sharply on fears that they will be hurt by the tech wreck. The banks and the big insurers are all down and down sharply. Fund companies are sliding, too.

Old economy stalwarts are also losing in heavy trading. Bombardier, Stelco, Canadian 88, Gulf Canada and Berkley Petroleum are all down.

Apart from golds such as Placer, Barrick and TVX, the scant crop of winners includes QLT, Veritas Energy, Wi-Lan, Astral Media, United Dominion and Bonavista Petroleum.

In New York, volume is surprisingly strong ahead of the big Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. But that’s because sellers are looking to bail out before they leave for the long weekend.

The Dow Jones industrial average is down 70 points to 10,424. The Nasdaq composite is off 85 points to 2,787. The S&P 500 is down 17 ticks to 1,330.

The Weakness in techs are weak is echoing around the Street. Names such as Lucent are taking a hit. Financials are all weak, including online brokers as doubts surfaced about their ability to weather a downturn. General Electric was hit on a rumour that it would be issuing a profit warning. Nervous investors tanked the stock before the Dow heavyweight had a chance to issue a denial, which it later did.

The CDNX is following the trend, down 51 points to 2,995, falling below 3,000 for the first time in months. Techs are down 3.2%, oils are off about 2.2%, mines are off just a bit. Guyana Goldfields is the top trader, flat at 34¢ on almost 1 million shares.