The Toronto Stock Exchange 300 was up and down through most of the day. A strong afternoon rally picked trading off the floor, but the action wasn’t enough to put the TSE over the top. It closed down 27 points to 7676.

The action among the subsectors was relatively split, but weighted toward the down side. Eight sectors declined on the day while only six advanced, and none of those more than 1%. On the downside, gold led with a 2.7% loss. Oil and gas was right behind with a 1.9% loss.

Talisman sold off today, dropping 3.3% to close at $60.70 as the outlook on that companies holdings in Sudan remain up in the air. Also affecting the sector was the announcement by Hunt Oil Co. that it had acquired Chieftan International Inc., for less than Chieftan’s listed share price — just before the deal was announced. Hunt oil got away with the discounted buy-out because of downward outlook for natural gas prices.

On the most active list, Nortel was number one. It continued to sell off and lost another 54¢ today, closing at $12.30.

There weren’t many big moves today, except for issues that have been moving all week. MGI Software continues to sell off and it dropped another 16¢ today to close at 59¢. Itemus was another big seller today. It dropped 2.5¢ to close at 8.5¢, while 360Networks continued to fade, dropping 7¢ today to close at 32¢. Nexus was another big trader, dropping 3¢ to close at 16¢.

Volume today was higher than much of the week, coming in at 159 million. Overall, market trend among individual issues was quite negative with 658 declining and only 420 advancing.

The CDNX today closed down again, dropping 34 points to close at 3241. Market trend was fairly negative with 280 issues declining compared to 183 advancing. Volume was 39 million shares.

The Canadian dollar sild a slight 0.05% today to close at US65.17¢..

In the U.S., the markets faired much better than their Canadian counterparts today. Early pessimism eventually gave way to buyers and all the major indexes finished up on the day. The Dow Jones industrials average closed up 51 points at 10647. The NASDAQ compsite index closed up 39 points at 2031 and the S&P 500 finished up 11 points at 1223.