Markets opened low this morning on news that Cisco chalked up its first quarterly loss ever. In Toronto, that sent the techs into a spiral, but broader market strength was enough to give the TSE 300 a slight gain on the day. It closed ahead 6.4 points at 8,070.6.

The industrial products sub-index closed down 2.69%, thanks to weaker techs, but overall 11 of the TSE’s 14 sub-indices posted gains.

Many investors were looking for safety in gold. The gold sub-index advanced a strong 5%. The oil and gas sector, consumer products, metals and pipelines were all up over 1%.

The market trend among individual issues was also positive with advancers outpacing decliners 596 to 520. Volume was 169 million shares.

Nortel Networks was the most active issue. It dropped 5.16% to close at $24. 27.

Shire Pharmaceuticals’ announcement that it is offering equity for BioChem Pharm shares sent BioChem up 9.34% today. It closed at $4.70.

Also in the biotechs, Lorus Therapeutics announced that its anti-cancer drug GTI-2040 will be the topic of a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Investors seemed to like that and bid Lorus shares up 12.72%. It closed at $1.95.

360networks is finding favour with investors again after recent debt concerns. It was up 26.64% today to close at $2.71.

Gulf Canada was up 5.14% today on a good earnings report. It closed at $8.80.

Scotia Capital announced today that it was the only bank to make the Euromoney’s top 15 list of foreign exchange banks. The news seemed to help Scotia stock which was up 3.14% at $40.35.

The CDNX added 9.38 points to close at 3,157.70. Volume was a respectable 40 million shares. The market trend was positive, with 252 issues advancing and 228 declining.

The loonie, though, had an outstanding day. It closed up over half a cent at a straight US65¢.

In New York, markets took the Cisco news a little harder. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index shed 42.12 points to 2,156.63.

The Dow Jones industrial average was off 16.53 points at 10,866.98,and the S&P 500 slipped 5.66 points to 1,255.54.