By Jeff Sanford

(May 16 – 18:00 ET) – Markets digested yesterday’s rate cut and decided they liked it. All major North American indices made strong gains today.

The Nasdaq composite index advanced 80.86 points to 2166.44, a gain of 3.88%. The Dow Jones industrial average soared 342.95 points to 11,215.92, the first time it’s been over 11,000 since September. The S&P 500 gained a strong 35.54 points, or 2.84% to end the session at 1,284.98.

Canadian markets weren’t quite as exuberant. The TSE 300 advanced 104.29 points to close at 8,146.00, a gain of 1.30%.

That advance, though, was broad based. Every TSE sub-index was ahead on the day except for oil and gas.

Leading the advance was the gold sub-index with a 4.5% advance. It was followed by metals and minerals, which was up 4.3% today. Also doing well was transportation; it rose 2.7%, while conglomerates climbed 2.1% and industrial products moved up 2%.

Among individual issues, the market trend was also strongly positive, with advancers outpacing decliners 682 to 405 decliners. Volume was also strong at 194 million shares traded.

Among gold prodcers, Kinross outperformed. It was the second most heavily traded issue on the day, climbing 23.16% to close at $1.17. Barrick also did well, climbing 3.96% to close at $27.55 as did Franco Nevada, which closed up 7.53% at $20.43. Placer Dome was ahead 3.01% at $17.77. All were heavily traded.

Research In Motion was popular today, climbing 10.55% to close at $51.25. 360networks, though, continued to drop, losing 12.29% to close at $2.07. Telesystems International also continued to drop, losing 10.40% of its value to close at $2.24.

C.I. Fund Management was up a good 3.33% to close at $15.50.

The CDNX was also up, climbing 30.08 points to close at 3,211.26. Volume was 39 million shares. Advancers outpaced decliners, 253 to 205.

The loonie jumped almost half a cent today to close at US64.92¢