All the bad news released on Friday is making Toronto investors nervous. The TSE 300 opened low this morning and has since dropped steadily through the morning. It’s down 73 points so far today.

The drop is largely in the back of Nortel, which continues to crash. Shortly after noon shares in the Brampton-based company were down over 10% on heavy trading.

JDS also continues the descent begun Friday–it’s now down 7% over the course of the morning.

The other stock story from Friday, 360Networks, is actually up a bit this morning on news that it cancelled plans to acquire NetRail. It had been down after missing an important debt payment Friday.

Rogers is trading up this morning on news that British Telecommunications Plc. is going to sell some $500 million worth of Rogers Wireless shares it owns, helping Rogers in its bid to privatize its wireless division.

Overall, market trend is slightly negative in terms of sector. IP is leading the way down with a 3.3% drop so far. Also dropping are the paper and forest, utilities, transportation, oil and gas, consumer products and merchandising sectors.

On the upside: the real estate, conglomerates, financial services, pipelines, communications and gold sectors.

South of the border, major indexes are split. While the Dow has been able to make very slight gains in the day, both the S&P 500 and NASDAQ are trending lower.

The loonie has taken a big plunge this morning, already dropping over half a cent. It’s at 65.24¢ U.S. compared to its previous close of 65.74¢ U.S.