By Jeff Sanford

It was another seesaw day for Toronto stocks. The TSE 300 opened 40 points above last Friday’s close, but began falling through the day before hitting an intra-day low of 7,579. A late day round buying propelled it to a small 35-point gain at 7,642.70.

Among the sub-indices, communications led the way up with a 1.9% gain.

Paper and forest products also advanced on an 8.8% gain in Alliance Forest Products on news that it is going to be acquired by Bowater. Alliance, the most heavily traded issue of the day, closed at to $24.26.

On the downside, consumer products were off 2.4%, led by a 11.2% decline in Biovail to $51.50.

Overall market breadth was positive with 10 sub-indices heading higher and three declining. Among individual issues, advancers outpaced decliners 536 to 403. Today’s volume was only 128 million shares, as the action was relatively restrained.

There weren’t too many big price changes today, although Bombardier advanced 5.05% to close at $22.90.

The financials were active today with National Bank up 2.98% to close at $28.65, CIBC up 2.15% at $50.87 and Bank of Nova Scotia up 2.40% at $41.37. BMO was the most heavily traded bank, though it slipped a slight 0.10% at to $39.50.

Among tech stocks, RIM fell 8.90% to close at $30.61, while Nortel gained 6¢ to $22.30.

It was also quiet on the CDNX, where 34 million shares changed hands. The small cap index closed relatively unchanged at 3,006.02, a gain of 0.67%. Advancers outpaced decliners 245 to 225.

The loonie was also up slightly, closing at US63.48¢, a gain of 0.06%.

The news wasn’t so good in the United States, where weakness in tech stocks dropped the Nasdaq composite index 3.11% to 1,782.97, its lowest close since November 3, 1998.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 100.85 points to 9,777.93, while the S&P 500 slipped 14.46 points to 1,145.87.