By Jeff Sanford
(August 15 – 18:00 ET) – The TSE 300 composite index closed for the first time above 11,000 today, inching past the largely psychological mark by just a few points and setting a new record. The index closed at 11,032.30 today, a gain of 33.17 points.
The advance was concentrated, though. Overall the market trended down with declining issues outnumbering advancers 571 to 529.
Among the sub-indices, eight finished the day up. Metals and oil led the way up, both with gains of over 1%. Leading on the downside was the consumer products sub-index with a loss of 1.47%.
Volume was up dramatically today at almost 246 million shares traded. Traders attributed the spike to day traders returning to the market after their disastrous spring tech meltdown.
They seemed to be interested in Heritage Concepts which finally succumbed to some profit taking, it closed down 12%. It also accounted for much of the action today as over 70 million shares of Heritage traded hands today on no news.
Williams Multi-tech, the former resource company-turned-tech play was also a favourite. Forty five million of its shares were traded today to push its share price up 44%.
Nortel was only the fourth most heavily traded share today with under 4 million share trading. It climbed 90¢ to close at $118.90.
The resource sector did well on the rising price of oil. Petro-Canada was up $1.15 to close at $31.85.
The CDNX was down 27.46 points on the day to close at 3,316.05.
The loonie pegged down a few points over the course of the day. It closed at US67.19¢, down from US67.34¢ yesterday. There was relatively little trading action though as traders continue to wait for economic data. The Bank of Canada’s semi-annual monetary report, due out tomorrow, might be just what they are waiting for. Both the U.S. and Canadian CPI numbers are out later this week , too, and those numbers may also spark trading.
In the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average slumped on selling in retail and financial stocks. The Dow closed at 11,067, for a loss of 109.14 on the day. The profit taking was almost expected after several days of strong gains on the Dow. Home Depot and Hewlett-Packard were two of the biggest losers. Even with the decline, the Dow is at the top of its trading range as we head into the Federal Open Market Committee meeting just a week from now.
Semiconductors are slowly coming back after their recent selloff. Internet and networking issues also posted gains, pushing the Nasdaq composite into the black for the day,if only slightly. The tech market gained two points to close at 3,851.69.
The S&P 500 ended the day at 1484.43, a drop of 7.13 points.