Stocks have surrendered early gains as traders struggle to find a reason to buy. At midday the TSE 300 is down 44 points to 6,658.

Volume is rather strong at 94.3 million shares, with sellers holding a slight edge on buyers. Losers outnumber winners by a margin of six to five.

Golds and media stocks are popular today, and there’s some small buying in techs and biotechs. Miners are very weak this morning, as are conglomerates and banks.

The industrials are being hammered at the hands of the transportation equipment stocks, which are down almost 16% thanks to Bombardier.

Bombardier is the story stock of the day, down about 17% after announcing that it will start to layoff about 10% of its aerospace staff immediately. It also warned that future deep cuts are ahead if he markets don’t turn around, and there aren’t many bets that this is going to happen soon. The September 11 attacks and the fallout in he airline industry is to blame

There’s also plenty of weakness in stocks associated with transportation and equipment manufacturing. Energy stocks are sliding, with names such as Westcoast Energy, Baytex Energy, CP, Ketch Energy and Ensign Resource Services are down, as are Sherritt and Fording. Other losers today include Research in Motion and ATI.

Big job cuts are having the opposite effect on Air Canada. It is up 2.5% on news of large staff and service cuts.

Techs are bouncing a bit too today, led by Nortel Networks, Rogers Wireless, Cogeco and Geac. There’s some safe haven buying today, with Barrick and Placer Dome coming out as the chief beneficiaries. Vivendi and BCE are driving media stocks higher. There are also large gains in AGF, Hudsons Bay and Quebecor.

In New York, stocks opened up and have been trading off this morning’s highs. The Dow Jones industrial average is down 98 points to 8,562. The Nasdaq compaq is off 26 ticks to 1,475. The S&P 500 has dropped seven points to 1,005.

The small caps are weak today, too. The CDNX index is down 13 points to 2,756. Volume is weak at 10.9 million shares.

Techs are up, but energy shares are weak, and miners are down a bit. Imagis Techs Inc is the day’s top trader, up 2.7% to $1.93 on volume of 647,102 shares.