Investors decided to take some money off the table today in the wake of strong advances on North American markets over the past few weeks. The TSE 300 slipped 46.71 points to 8,348.60.

The losses were concentrated among the industrials and golds, which declined by 2% and 1.6% respectively. Also down were communications and media, consumer products, and merchandising.

Overall, eight of the TSE’s 14 sub-indices declined. The advances among real estate, financial services, paper, utilities and pipelines were muted. None of those sub-indices advanced more than half a percent.

Among individual issues, market trend was negative with decliners edging out advancers 571 to 530.

Gulf Canada led the most active list today. It dropped 2.34% to close at $9.62.

Not much else moved either way today, except for some of the techs on the downside. Sherritt, though, managed to pull out a 3.28% advance to close at $5.35. And Xplore Technologies Corp, enjoyed a 37.76% runup today after it announced a letter of intent with a Dubai company to buy 50,000 of Xplore1s mobile comuting systems over the next three years. It closed at $7.15.

Battered Moore Corp. was up 10.49% today to close at $8.85. No news on the move.

In the tech selloff, Descartes Systems was off 10.14% to close $32.35 and RIM dropped 7.14% to close at $57.25.

The CDNX inched up 13.48 points today to close at 3,294.94 points. Volume was 43 million shares traded. Market trend was neutral though, with 276 issues advancing and 264 declining.

The loonie had a disastrous day, plunging almost three quarters of a cent to close to US64.43ยข.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 151.73 points to 11,105.51. The S&P 500 slipped 20.33 points at 1,289.05. The Nasdaq composite index fell 70.37 points at 2,243.48.