With American markets closed for Independence Day, volume was incredibly thin on the Toronto Stock Exchange today. Only 59 million shares changed hands.

With no direction from U.S. markets, the TSE 300 meandered to an 18 point loss on the day, closing at 7,731.

Markets had been waiting on news about British telecom equipment maker Marconi, which had its trading suspended while the directors were in a board meeting all day. The company finally announced it had no plans for further write-downs.

Nevertheless, tech stocks were already trading lower on the halt. Nortel also suffered from yesterday’s announcement that Moody’s would be knocking its credit rating down. It ended the day off another 19¢ at $13.66.

There wasn’t much action elsewhere. Profit takers took Bovar down slightly after the company gained quite a bit in the wake of an announcement last week that it will start paying dividends. The stock finished off 8% at 5.5¢.

Certicom was heavily sold, dropping 11.81% to close at $3.36. Manulife was also sold off today. It dropped 3.53% to close at $42.30.

The European Commission approved plans by Norway’s Norske Skog and Canada’s Abitibi Consolidated to buy a stake in Pan Asia Paper Co. Norske Skog Canada was unchanged at $18.45. while Abitibi was up 7 cents at $11.67

Market trend among the TSE’s sub-indices was slightly negative with seven of the 14 moving down, but none moved over 1% either way.

Among individual issues, decliners outpaced advancers 486 to 447.

The CDNX today finished up 4 points at 3.203 in low volume of 26.6 million shares. Market trend was positive with 155 issues advancing and 145 declining.

The loonie gained another quarter of a cent today, climbing 0.30% to close at US66.19¢.

GE captain Jack Welch began to take heat by the end of the day for the scuttled GE-Honeywell merger. Watch for that to move markets tomorrow.