By James Langton

(September 19 – 13:00 ET) – Stocks are up modestly at midday in a rather light trading. The TSE 300 has gained 30 points to 10,812 on 76.5 million shares. Buying volume is outpacing the selling 4:3, however decliners outnumber advancers 11:8.

The majority of TSE groups are on the upside, nine of 14 sub-indices are higher. Industrials are leading the way up 1%, joined by paper stocks, utilities and merchandisers. There’s weakness in the mines, golds, media and oils.

Nortel Networks is leading the industrials up, rallying almost 2% off yesterday’s levels. Joining Nortel on the upside are JDS Uniphase, Certicom, Telco Split and CryptoLogic.

The techs aren’t all rallying along with Nortel, however. PRI Automation is off another 13%. Research in Motion, Cell-Loc and Biovail are all down, too.

Videotron is up a little in active trading.

Potash Corp. is a big gainer, up 10%, based on strong sales and prices.

Alliance Atlantis is also up about 10%, albeit in light trading, in the media sub-index. That group is down, however, with Seagram off 2.4%.

The financials are up lightly today. The banks are strong, led by Royal, up $1.65. All the other big banks are up, too. The big loser is Power Financial, down about 6%. Industrial Alliance is down 1% this morning in active trading, although it is set to be added to several TSE indices after today’s close. Canadian Western Bank and Fairfax are weak, too.

Among the oils, Husky is up, but Petro Canada, Suncor and others are down sharply.

Sherritt is down after yesterday’s heady rally.

One of the top movers is gold company turned Internet play Sikaman Gold. It has gained 21% on news of its acquisition of 54% of TomaNet Inc. for 1.5 common shares of SKG, issued from treasury. Sikaman intends to acquire 100% of the shares. TomaNet Inc. is a software management company that owns SRB International, Inc., an educational software developer, and Great Lakes Research & Development Ltd., a developer of environmental information management software.

In New York, markets are mixed at midday. The Dow is down 14 points to 10,795. The Nasdaq composite is staging a mild rally, up 70 points to 3,796. The S&P 500 has added eight to 1452.

High oil prices and the wonky euro seem to be hitting the blue chips, while techs are mostly bouncing on bargain hunting action. Intel is up on an analyst upgrade. The financials are strong after results at Goldman Sachs blew away the Street.

Stocks are down slightly at the CDNX. At midday the index is down three to 3,644 on 24 million shares, strong volume. Oils are up strongly, but mines and techs are weak. Genoil Inc. is up 50% to 9¢ on 4.5 million shares.