Toronto stocks drifted lower today in a lacklustre trading session. The TSE 300 fell 41 points to close at 7,587..

Volume was light, however, at only 122 million shares.

Among TSE sub-indices, metals and minerals was the big loser, ending the day down 4.8%. Transportation fell 3.8% and industrial products slipped 2.3%. Overall, eight of the TSE 14 sub-indices suffered losses today.

Metals fells on a 6% decline in Alcan, which ended the day at $54.92; and a 90¢ drop in the price of Inco, which closed at $25.

The transportation sector was down on a 4.2% decline in CN, which closed at $64.83 after it announced a dip in second-quarter profits yesterday.

Today’s announcement by Lucent that it will post a third quarter loss, layoff up to 20,000 more employees and suspend dividends affected the whole fibre optic sector. That was bad news for Canadian heavy weights like Nortel and JDS, which both dropped more than 4% — Nortel closed at $11.18, while JDS finished at $14.90, a new 52-week low

On the upside, the golds led with a 2.1% advance.

Among individual issues, market trend was strongly negative with decliners outpacing advancers 613 to 421.

The most active stock on the day was Ventra Group which was up on news that it had approved a takeover offer from U.S. auto parts maker Flex-N-Gate Corp. Ventra ended the day up 27% at $1.61.

A few of the financials did well today. CIBC was up 67¢ at $53.60 and Manulife was up 57¢ at $43.30.

Look for the tech sector to turn around tomorrow, as C-Mac announced after the market closed that its revenues rose 32% in the second quarter. It closed off $1.12 today at $32.75.

The CDNX today was off 4 points at 3,074. That was on low volume of 26 million shares. Market trend was negative with 196 issues ending down and only 177 moving up.

The loonie made up some ground today, advancing a strong 0.32% to close at US64.95¢.

The Lucent announcement hit harder south of the border. Today’s losses were worse on Wall Street. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 183 points to 10,241, a loss of 1.76%. The S&P 500 was off 19 points to 1,172, a loss of 1.63%. The Nasdaq composite index slipped 29 points to 1959, a loss of 1.47%.