By Jeff Sanford

(November 30 – 17:00 ET) – The Toronto Stock Exchange made a dramatic recovery this afternoon after hitting serious lows all day. The TSE 300 composite index, which dipped as low as 8593, added 200 points in the two hours before the final bell. It closed at 8819.90, a loss of just over a point form yesterday’s close.

The recovery came in the industrial products sector. Within that sector, Nortel was up $2.10 to $57.50, a gain of 3.79%. CAE was up 2.38% tp$21.50 and Research In Motion climbed 10.44% to $99.40.

Some techs didn’t recover. JDS Uniphase was off 11.67% at $80.25 for the day, 360Networks was off 12.40% at $15.90, C-Mac was down 7.01% at $63.00 and Celestica finished the day down 13.30% at $80.80.

Some of the financials also faced a sell off. Royal Bank finished the day off 2.75% at $45.95 and TD was down 1.61% at $39.75. Mackenzie and CI were both taking on water today, sinking 3.47 and 3.82% respectively. Manulife, though, continues to climb. It was up 2.84% at $39.85.

Onex dropped 5.07% today. Onex CEO, Gerry Schwartz, has set up a separate holding company to negotiate the takeover of Chapters by Indigo, owned by his wife, Heather Reisman. Perhaps investors are trying to send a message.

Overall ten of fourteen subsectors finished the day down. Communications was the leader on the downside, dropping 2.03%. On the upside gold stocks rose 1.28% and real estate gained 2.57%.

Among individual issues, 702 declined on the day while 409 advanced. Volume was 149 million.

The CDNX today dropped 43.13 points to finish at 2889.73. Volume was 44 million with 387 issues declining and 231 advancing.

The Canadian dollar built on yesterday’s advance, climbing another 0.59% to close 65.25¢ U.S. Currency traders must be liking the comparatively smooth Canadian election.

In the U.S. there was no happy ending. Techs continued to melt – as predicted. After Gateway announced reduced earnings caused by slowing demand for PCs at the closing bell yesterday, investors were expecting a bloodbath this morning. And it came. Techs dropped precipitously in after hours markets yesterday before crashing further when markets opened this morning.

Some investors did come out this afternoon to pick through the wreckage and snap up some deals but Nasdaq Composite Index still ended the day down 108.91 points at 2598.02, the Dow Jones industrial average fell a precipitous 214.62 points at 10414.49 and the S&P 500 was down 26.92 points at 1314.99. Nasdaq experienced its second highest day volume-wise–2,689,859,000 shares were traded; 985 Nasdaq stocks hit new 52-week lows today.

Markets are beginning to take on an almost masochistic tone. Since the U.S. election, according to Wilshire Associates, over $1.7 trillion in wealth has evaporated from U.S. markets. Nasdaq’s share? According to the exchange, some $700 million has disappeared into the ether since the election.