By Jeff Sanford

(March 30 – 17: 0 ET) – The Toronto Stock Exchange 300 composite index had a strong session, today, advancing smartly across all sectors. The TSE ended the day, up 163.22 points, at 7608.00 — a push of 2.19%.

The advance was broad-based, with communications gaining 2.12%, conglomerates gaining 2.64%, oil climbing 2.31%, paper up 2.04%, transportation up 3.5% and industrial products climbing 3.16%. Financial
services, gold, merchandising, metals, pipelines, real estate and utilities were all up over 1%.

Among individual issues, advancing issues outpaced declining issues 536 to 403. Volume was 145 million shares.

On the most active list, Nortel led, with a 4.56% bounce after recent losses. It closed at $22.24. Some of the other techs that did well include 360Networks up 9.14% at $21.30 and Descartes Systems up 9.51% at $1.85.

There was a lot of green, and few issues in the red among those trading large blocks today. Bombardier was up a strong 4.06% at $21.80. Penny stock, Saco Smartvision, seemed to have caught the eye of momentum traders. It shot up an incredible 114% on the day.

Among the financials, Sun Life was up 3.42%, Royal Bank was up 3.02%, Manulife was up 3.49%.

There was more consolidation in the petroleum sector. Baytex announced it has offered $72 million for OGY Petroleum, which ended up 6.69% at $2.87.

The CDNX also had a good day. Heavy trading of 48 million shares sent the index up 47.80 points to close at 3005.35. Advancers outpaced decliners 290 to
223.

The Canadian dollar ran into more selling pressure today, dropping 0.25% to close at US63.44ยข.

In the U.S. the Dow Jones industrials index rose 79.72 points to close at 9878.78. The NASDAQ composite index climbed 19.69 points at 1840.26.