North American markets continued their downward spiral Thursday. The only consolation was that Toronto stocks didn’t slide as far today as stocks south of the border.

The TSE 300 slid 175 points to close at 6,521, a drop of 2.6%.

The pain was spread across the sub-indices. Only the safe havens of gold and utilities managed gains. The utilities sub-index closed up 2.2%.

The metals, communications and conglomerates sub-indices all suffered losses greater than 5%. Industrials, financial services and forest products also posted heavy losses.

Volume was strong again at 158 million shares. Market momentum was deeply negative. Advances trailed declines 305 to 777, with 197 issues closing unchanged. New lows dwarfed new highs 165 to 12.

Tech bellwether Nortel Networks led the most-active list. Nortel slipped 9¢ to $7.91, on a volume of 21 million shares. Bombardier, the number two issue, gave up yesterday’s gains, shedding 80¢ to $12.94, a drop of 5.8%. Canadian Pacific fell 7%.

Among the few bright spots on the TSE was BCE, which advanced $1.35 to $34.10, a gain of 4%. Canadian Hunter did even better, gaining $4 to $35, a jump of nearly 13%.

The big banks all lost ground today, with Royal Bank finishing down more than 6%, followed by slides in BMO, CIBC, Scotia and TD. Sun Life led insurers lower, falling 7.5%.

The CDNX Index closed down 3.88 at 2,781.19. Volume was 29.9 million shares, with 146 advances, 257 declines and 556 issues unchanged

In New York, stocks plunged Thursday as investors and analysts continued to slash their expectations for economic growth and corporate earnings.

Even Fed chair Alan Greenspan’s expressed uncertainty in his address to Congress. Greenspan said that the U.S. economy will be hurt by last week’s attack and there can be no certainty about when it will recover.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered its lowest close in three years. The Dow fell 383 points, over 4%, to 8,376. The Nasdaq composite index fell 57, or 3.7%, to 1,471. The S&P 500 shed 32 points, or 3%, to 985.