At midday, the TSE 300 is up just 11 points to 7900. Though volume is much improved today at 100.7 million shares, with buyers holding a 10:7 advantage on sellers. Winners are outnumbering losers by a slight margin of just 11:10.

Middle East tensions, including talk of oil embargoes by Iran and Iraq, has pushed the TSE energy index up about 2%. Gold is another area of strength, as prices for the safe-haven metal are flirting with the US$309 per ounce level. Miners, financials and real estate are seeing modest gains, too.

The big gainers today include big names in oil, such as PanCanadian Energy, Petro Canada, Canadian Natural Resources, Compton Petroleum, Ketch Energy, Baytex Energy, Olympia Energy, KeyWest Energy and Rio Alto.

Golds are strong again, although they put in most of their gains yesterday. Today, Barrick is up another 0.3% in heavy trading. Placer Dome is seeing lots of action too, and there are gains in TVX Gold and Cambior.

The banks are the other notable area for the bulls, with Royal Bank up 1% in active trading. CIBC is gaining too. BCE is up about 0.6% in heavy trading once again.

Consumer stocks, transports and paper plays are notably weak today. On the downside, Abitibi is leading the paper stocks down. It is off more than 2% in active trading. Old economy losers include Stelco and Canadian 88 too.

Tech stocks are weak on earnings worries and down 2.6% so far today. Nortel Networks is down 3.4% today. Geac Computer, Cognos, Telus, Wireless Matrix, and Zarlink Semi are all down.

In financing news, MDC Corporation and Davis + Henderson Income Fund have closed a public offering of 18,965,792 units of the fund for gross proceeds of $200 million. The offering has been underwritten by a syndicate led by CIBC World Markets Inc. and Scotia Capital Inc. Proceeds received by MDC from this offering will be used for the repayment of indebtedness and general corporate purposes.

Brascan Corporation has entered into an agreement with a syndicate of underwriters led by RBC Capital Markets for a $125 million bought deal of 5 million unsecured junior subordinated debentures. The net proceeds of the issue will be added to the general funds of Brascan and used to finance general corporate purposes, including increasing its interests in its principal business units and the repayment of corporate debt. The offering
is expected to close on April 19.

In M&A news, Nexfor has acquired the oriented strand board assets of International Paper Co. for US$250 million. Cognicase has closed its acquisition of CYME International Inc., a worldwide supplier of PC-based power engineering software applications.

The S&P/CDNX Composite Index is down modestly today, too, shedding just two points to 1,187. Volume has revived among the small caps too, with 21.6 million shares crossing the tape so far today. Amern Bonanza Gold is the top trader, down 8% to 11¢ on 1.4 million shares.

In New York, the fundamental strength in oils and gold hasn’t been enough to overcome recovery and profit jitters in other parts of the market. The Dow Jones industrial index is down 71 points to 10292. The NASDAQ composite index has dropped 39 points to 1824. The S&P is down 10 ticks to 1137.