By Jeff Sanford

(September 14 – 17:30 ET) – The TSE rocketed back above the 11,000 mark today as investors, sensing a buying opportunity in Nortel, piled back into the Brampton-based networking giant.

Perhaps traders reread their new economy manifestos overnight and renewed their faith in anything internet, but whatever the reasons the low prices of the last few days were a carrot managers couldn’t resist. By the closing bell Nortel was up $7.75 to finish at $107, a gain of 7.8%.

The TSE 300 ended the day up an incredible 328.53 points to close at 11,078.10. The Nortel action also pushed the industrial products subsector up 5.88%.

Elsewhere in the market, the action was a bit more subded. Overall, eight of 14 sub-indices finished the day higher, while five finished down. On the upside, conglomerates was up 2.77% and financials were up 1.58%. No indexes finished down more than 1%.

Total volume was 188 million shares. Among individual issues 582 finished the day higher while 535 finished the day down, 48 issues hit new highs on the day.

Videotron shares were the biggest movers today in the wake of the announcement of a deal for Qubecor to acquire the cable outlet. Over 24 million shares traded hands. Videotron stock finished the day up 55¢ at $44.50.

Shares in Rogers were down 1.60% today even though they came away from the Videotron saga with a break up fee of some $240 million

Medisolution shares continue to climb on speculation the company may be the recipient of much of the $500 million the government promised to sink into medical information technology following the first ministers conference last week. Medisolutions finished up 16.39% today.

Tech speculators dumped money into Microforum today on news that it had been chosen to implement the e-com facility of venerable Canadian retailer Hudson’s Bay Company and discount retailer Zellers. The HBC site is expected to launch end of 2000. Microforum stock jumped over 13% today.

Among the rapidly climbing financial stocks, it was Bank of Montreal’s turn to outperform. Stock prices have been inching up in front of the financial services reform legislation expected to be passed this fall. Toady BMO was up $1.85 to $66.70. The gain was primed by news that BMO bought Arizona-based Century Bank. Royal put on $1.30 to close at $93.75 today.

The increase in the conglomerate sub-index was largely the result of a 7% jump in Onex shares.

Mitel gained 3.52% on news that it is expanding its Ottawa facility to meet red-hot demand for semiconductor components.

The Canadian dollar crashed overnight, dropping to US67.08¢, from yesterday’s close of US67.46¢. The selling pressure became intense once the loonie dropped below some significant technical levels even though StatsCan reported a drop in inflation.

The CDNX finished the day up 24.65 points at 3,651.92.

The U.S. story today was also all about techs. Investors cycled out of the Dow and back into Nasdaq, pushing the Dow down 94.71 points and the Nasdaq composite up 19.97 points. Those two markets closed at 11,087.47 and 39,13.86 respectively. The S&P 500 ended the day at 1,480.87, a decline of 4.04 points.