A small afternoon rally pulled Toronto stocks up slightly from midday lows, but with no compelling reason to trade higher the TSE 300 finished down 37 points at 8,092.

Only the real estate sub-index gained more than one percent. It advanced 1.4% on a 6.3% gain in the shares of FirstService Corp.

Also advancing were oil and gas, paper and forest, consumer products and financial services. Overall market trend among sectors was neutral, with seven sub-indices advancing.

On the downside, communications and media was off 1.3%, partly on a 3.1% drop in the price of Shaw Communications. It closed at $33. Torstar was also down, dipping 3.2% to $18.65.

The bellwether industrial products sub-index led the way down though with a 2.1% decline in the wake of layoff announcements and a negative outlook from Juniper Networks. Fellow former tech darling Nortel Networks dropped 3.7% to $18.50. That’s a new 52-week low for Nortel.

Other tech losers include items with a 12.9% drop to close at 27¢. C-Mac shed 7.3% to $41.65, Burntsand dropped 7.7% at $2.53, and Celestica fell 6.7% to $74.05.

Oddly enough one of the few techs up on the day was Certicom which sold off heavily last week. It bounced 6.6% today to $5.68.

360networks also bounced this afternoon after a sustained free fall over the last several sessions. It advanced 5.26% to $1.

TLC Laser Eye Center was also up sharply today, gaining 9.37% to close at $6.89.

News that CPR opened an investor relations group, and that the ban on rail mergers in North America has been lifted didn’t help parent company CP any. CP slipped 2% at $62.37.

Overall, volume was light with only 107 million shares traded. The trend among individual issues was also negative with decliners outpacing advancers 576 to 486 advancing.

The CDNX also closed lower. It dropped 35 points to 3,364. Volume was light at 37 million shares. Market trend was negative with decliners outpacing advancers 280 to 179 advance.

The good news continues to be the loonie, which gained another quarter of a cent today to close at US65.91¢.

On Wall Street, techs were the losers, dragging the Nasdaq composite index down a full 2%. It closed at 2,171. Other indices were down, too. The Dow dropped 55 points to close at 10,922, and the S&P 500 was off 11 points at 1,254.