The Canadian markets opened on a weak note but some late-stage buying helped to trim the losses during Monday’s session. For the tale of the tape, the TSX Exchange fell 0.19%, while the TSX Gold Index managed to gain 0.9% and the TSX Venture Exchange, Canada’s largest junior exploration bourse, dropped 0.54% with the decliners beating out the advancers by a 464 to 351 margin on a respectable 181 million shares traded.

The gold guys continued to be the best performers during Wednesday trading on the Canadian markets as the price of bullion broke out to the upside. For the tale of the tape, the TSX Exchange dropped 0.91%, while the TSX Gold Index surged 7.5% and the TSX Venture Exchange, Canada’s largest junior exploration bourse, added 1.02% with the advancing issuers edging out the decliners by a 405 to 343 margin on 163 million shares traded.

A one day delay in the release of the bank bailout plan for the United States had the bulls and the bears battling to a draw during Monday trading on the Canadian markets. For the taile of the tape, the TSX Exchange added a modest 0.44%, while the TSX Gold Index fell back 4.4% and the TSX Venture Exchange, Canada’s largest junior exploration bourse, lost 0.91% with the declining issuers edging out the advancers by a 350 to 334 margin on 155 million shares traded.

After working in Silicon Valley for 15 years, I developed this theory called “The Myth of Empowerment.” While the Myth of Empowerment wasn’t intended to act as a qualitative indicator for stock picking, it turns out that it could easily be applied to the decline of Yahoo (Nasdaq:YHOO) – with the fallout inflicting damage on Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT).