By James Langton

(February 16 – 17:00 ET) – The TSE finished a wild ride finishing strongly to the upside today. The TSE 300 landed up 72.5 points to 9428.6 on massive volume of almost 272 million shares. Volume was about 2:1 in favour of buyers, and advancers outpaced decliners 13:11.

Financials, merchandisers and tech stocks were the leading sectors to the upside. Mergers were also a big story today. BCE Inc.’s proposed deal for Teleglobe Inc. generated a flurry of trading, with investors seeming to call the deal a bargain for BCE. Teleglobe finished down 13.25% on 10.9 million shares traded. BCE finished up more than 3% on 5.9 million shares. Nortel Networks finished up 1.5% too in heavy trading.

On the strength of these leading tech stocks, and yesterday’s rotation out of techs reversing itself today, the other big techs traded well too. Sierra Wireless added 12%. JDS Uniphase, Certicom, Hummingbird and MDSI Mobile all traded up. Biotechs were strong again too, thanks to Angiotech Pharmaceuticals, Biovail and Lorus Therapeutics.

Construction firm AGRA Inc. traded 7.8 million shares to finish the day up 43% on news that it is being taken over by a British rival.

Miners, conglomerates and real estate led the way for the losers. Seagram dropped another 2.7% today. Research in Motion dropped 4% in active trading after announcing a joint venture deal with Bid.com. Bid.com however finished up more than 4% on strong volume of 1.6 million shares. Retailers, Glildan and Venator, were also down.

The small caps finished up today. The CDNX index added 38.8 points to close at 3,402, breaaking yet another barrier. Volume was strong at 98.2 million shares. Oil and gas shares led the way up on the CDNX, with some help from technology stocks. Coromandel Resources Ltd was the hottest trade, up 86% on 4.2 million shares. Image Power Inc. and Whats-Online.com led the tech shares, up 46% and 30% respectively in heavy trading.

In New York trading was choppy ahead of key inflation data due out tomorrow and Friday, and testimony from U.S. Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan. The Dow closed down 156.7 points to 10,561.4. Nasdaq reversed earlier losses to close up 6.4 points to 4,427. The S&P dropped 15 points to 1,387.

A rotation back into techs and some hawkish comments from a Fed board member also played into the trading mood. The Bank of Canada made some hawkish comments of its own today too. “Based on the Bank’s conventional measure, it appears that the Canadian economy will be operating above estimated potential output in 2000,” said Bank governor Gordon Thiessen This signals advancing inflation, and presumably, hikes in interest rates.