The Toronto Stock Exchange 300 composite index opened high this morning, but faded through the day to close down four points at 7703. Some midday optimism and a slight rally around Oracle’s better-than-expected earnings news wasn’t enough to stem the decline.

The action among the sectors was split, with seven sectors advancing, six declining and the conglomerates sector closing unchanged.

On the upside, utilities led with a 1.1% advance. Also moving up were the metal, oil and gas, communications, financial services, pipelines and consumer products sectors.

On the downside, real estate led with a 1.5% decline. The paper and forest sector was off 1.2%, gold 0.9% and industrial products 0.7%

Real estate was off on a 6.2% decline in the shares of Dundee Realty Corporation. It closed at $13.60. A 5% drop in the price of Domtar helped the paper and forest sector down. It closed at $14.30.

Nortel continued to sell-off today, dropping another 22¢ to close at $12.84. Itemus was also heavily traded today, dropping yet another 8¢ to close at 11¢.
MGI also continued to melt, falling another 25.74% to close at 75¢. Also in the techs, ATI tech lost 4.55% to close at $11.55.

Talisman was up a strong 4.27% on news that it may be looking to divest its war-torn Sudan holdings. It closed at $62.75 today.

The rest of the market was fairly quiet today, with only 144 million shares trading. Market trend among individual stocks though was quite heavy with 622 issues declining and only 456 advancing.

The CDNX fell 25 points, today, to close at 3276 on volume of 37 million shares. Overall, 263 issues declined compared to 182 that advanced.

The Canadian dollar finished off relatively unchanged today, climbing a slight 0.02% to close at US65.20¢.

In the U.S., the NASDAQ composite index pulled out of an eight day losing streak, though, just barely. It was up only 4 points to close at 1993. The Dow Jones industrial average ended off 49 points up at 10597 while the S&P 500 was up 4 points at 1213.