By Jeff Sanford

(April 25 – 18:30 ET) – North American markets kicked up strong rallies this afternoon, although Toronto lagged the action in terms of gains. The TSE 300 closed up less than 1% at 7,945.30, a gain of 53.63.

On Wall Street, though, strong housing sales numbers kicked off a buying spree which pushed the Dow Jones industrial average up 170.86 points to close at 10,625.20. The Nasdaq composite index gained 43.20 points to close at 2059.81, and the S&P 500 advanced19.28 points to 1,228.75.

On the TSE, the market advance was spread across sectors, with 10 of the 14 sub-indices posting gains.

On the upside, pipelines led with a 2.7% advance. Utilities was close behind with a 2.4% advance. Within the utilities sector Telesystem International climbed 9.5% to close at $1.27, reversing substantial drops over the last week.

In the pipelines sector, TransCanada was out front with a 3.1% advance to close at $18.99. Merchandising also did well with a 1.3% increase, much of that coming from a 4% increase in George Weston Ltd., which closed at $93.60.

Within the tech-heavy industrial products sub-index, which closed up less than a percent, an 11.3% advance in Celestica was offset by a 1.7% decline in the price of Nortel. C-Mac did well, climbing 7.4% to close at $44.30.

Among individual issues market breath was narrower with advancers edging out decliners 550 to 516 declined. Trading activity was relatively light, with only 163 million shares trading.

The loonie reversed yesterday’s gains, closing off 0.12% at US64.56¢.

The CDNX slipped 3.47 points to close at 3033.27. Market breadth was also just about neutral with 238 issues advancing and 226 declining. Volume was heavy though with 47 million shares trading.