By James Langton

(January 8 – 13:00 ET) – The market is filing a missing persons report on buyers this morning. Stocks are drifting lower as profit fears return to swamp any buying impulses by Toronto traders.

At midday, the TSE 300 is down 75 points to 8,615. Volume is light at 55 million shares, about four to three in favour of sellers. Losers outnumber gainers nine to eight.

Technology and financial stocks are taking most of the blame this morning, as any rate cut optimism remaining from last week dissipates.

Industrials and utilities are each down about 2%, financials are off 1.6%. Mines and golds are the only sub-indices drumming up any interest.

Nortel Networks is leading the way down, off 3% on volume of 4.2 million shares. A couple of moves to raise capital among European telcos is depressing sentiment for this sector beyond the ambient recession fear. Nortel is being followed south by techs such as Research in Motion, Celestica, C-MAC, Sierra Wireless, Janna, Open Text and QLT.

Among the financials, all the banks are down with the exception of Scotia, which is managing a 10¢ gain thanks to an upgrade from Merrill Lynch. BMO is the weakest bank, off $1.40 to $76.60. The insurers are weak today, too, led by Manulife.

The upside is all in boring old names such as Alcan, up almost 4% after its former fiancé Alcoa reported better than expected earnings this morning. Also strong are Burlington, Precision Drilling, Anderson, Abitibi, Pioneer Natural Resources, Weyerhaeuser and Canadian Tire.

One old economy name down sharply is FPI, down 4% on heavy volume of 1.7 million shares. No news from the company yet, though.

In New York, volume is light as traders find it tough to get excited by the current market scene.

After a brief flirtation with upward movement, the Dow Jones industiral average is down 44 points to 10,618. The Nasdaq composite is off 61 points to 2,346. The S&P 500 is down nine points to 1,289.

The rising gloom surrounding corporate profits was confirmed when Merrill Lynch cut its full-year profit growth estimates for the S&P 500 to 13.8% from 15% for 2000 and to 4.1% from 9% for 2001.

Within the market, techs such as IBM and Dell are down. The financials are generally following the weakness in the techs. Alcoa was a lonely bright spot on the strength of its good results.

The CDNX is sliding moderately, down just three points to 2,949 on average volume of 16.5 million shares. Techs are the source of weakness here, with mines up slightly and oils unchanged.

Hydromet Environmental is the top trader, flat at 13¢ on volume of 1.2 million shares, followed by Song Corp, up 14% to 25¢ on 1.15 million shares.