By Jeff Sanford

(April 18 – 18:00 ET) – The U.S. Federal Reserve Board announced a surprise inter-meeting rate cut of 50 basis points today.

This is the second inter-rate meeting this year, a rarity in itself. The half point suggests Fed chief Alan Greenspan is as worried and as unsure about the market as the rest of us.

North American markets reacted immediately to the news with the Dow jumping some 400 points in a matter of minutes. It held on to that advance and finished the day ahead 399.10 points to close at 10,615.83, a gain of 3.91%.

The Nasdaq composite index benefited even more, jumping an incredible 8.12% to end the session above 2,000 at 2,079.44. The S&P 500 gained 3.89%, or 46.35 points, to close at 1.238.16.

In Canada, the Toronto stocks followed suit. The TSE 300 jumped almost 100 points after the Fed announcement and ended the day up 312.11 points at 8,131.17.

The unexpected move by the Fed was good for nearly of the TSE’s sub-indices. Only the pipelines sub-index was off, and it was down less than half a percent.

On the upside, industrial products led with a massive 11.35% gain on the day as investors piled back into the major tech stocks. Utilities, metals and minerals, consumer products and conglomerates also benefited with advances over 2%.

Among individual issues, the story was the same. Advancing issues far outpaced decliners759 to 382. A flood of money washed over the market and volume was as heavy with 208 millions shares trading.

Much of that volume was Nortel Networks. The networking company was very heavily traded at 22 million shares. The stock advanced 16.03% to close at $27.50.

The second most traded issue was Bombardier. It advanced of 4.20% to close at $22.10.

TD Bank rounded out the top three most heavily traded issues with an advance of 3.68% to close at $39.72.

Celestica was also popular, and people were willing to pay for it. It advanced a 28.23% to close at $66.95. RIM was up 23.15% at $55.60.

In the financials, CI Fund Management was ahead 7.01% to close at $14.20.

There wasn’t much on the downside, though Talisman Energy slipped 2.83% to $62.25.

The CDNX also seemed to benefit today, though only slightly. It closed the day up 1.2% at 3,021.71. Market breadth though was just about neutral with 273 issues advancing and 223 declining. Volume was heavy at 44 million shares traded.

The rate cut makes the U.S. dollar look good, which in turn makes the loonie less appealing. The Canadian dollar was down slightly closing at US63.96ยข.