Oct. 22, 2009 (Baystreet.ca) --

Canadian stocks were fairly flat at Thursday's open, following weakness seen late yesterday. Lower commodity prices and some disappointing earnings news could weigh on the market. Only moments after Thursday's opening bell, the S&P TSX Composite index was ahead 5.51 points to 11,447.53. On Wednesday, the S&P/TSX Composite Index fell 96.10 points, or 0.83%, to close at 11,442.02. The market moved notably lower in the final hour of trading. Crude oil and gold prices fell and copper declined 2.7 cents to $3.0009 U.S. In corporate news, Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan reported third-quarter net earnings of $248.8 million U.S. or $0.82 U.S. per share, compared to $1.2 billion U.S. or $3.93 U.S. per share, in the same quarter last year. Precision Drilling Trust reported third-quarter net income of $72 million or $0.25 per unit, compared to $82 million or $0.61 per unit last year. Husky Energy reported third-quarter net earnings of $338 million or $0.40 per share compared with $1.27 billion or $1.50 per share in the same quarter last year. Cangene Corp. reported full-year net income of $59.9 million or $0.86 per share, compared with $29.6 million or $0.42 per share a year earlier. On the economic front, Canadian retail sales data increased 0.8% in August, according to data released Thursday morning. A rise of 0.1% is forecast, compared to a revised drop of 0.5% in July. Excluding autos, sales rose 0.5% after falling a revised 0.7% in July. The Canadian dollar skidded 0.38 cents to 95.29 cents U.S. ON BAYSTREET Of the 14 TSX subgroups, 10 went up in the early going. Global base metals led the parade, up 0.6%, followed by metals and mining and telecom stocks, up 0.5% each. There were two losing groups; real-estate stocks slid 0.4% and energy was off 0.1%. Materials and gold started the day flat. The TSX Venture Exchange nipped ahead 0.31 points to 1,342.90, while the Nasdaq Canada index lost 1.54 points to 700.72. ON WALLSTREET In New York, stocks were mixed at Thursday's open as investors continued to fret about third-quarter corporate results and reacted to a worse-than-expected job market report. The Dow Jones Industrials gained 40.20 points to 9.989.56. The S&P 500 index increased 2.32 points to 1,083.72. The Nasdaq composite index gave back 0.30 points to 2,150.43. Wall Street fell from its one-year high Wednesday after a late-stage selloff in banking shares, inspired by influential banking analyst Richard Bove's downgrade of Wells Fargo. The Dow and S&P 500 both fell 0.9%, while the Nasdaq lost about 0.6%. Dow Chemical reported third-quarter earnings that beat expectations. Dow said that it earnings were 63 cents U.S. per share, or 24 cents U.S. excluding certain charges, with revenues of $12 billion U.S. A consensus of analysts had expected revenue of $11.8 billion U.S. and earnings of 10 cents U.S. per share, according to Thomson Reuters consensus. Travelers, a New York-based insurer, reported earnings of $1.65 U.S. per diluted share, with net written premiums of $5.3 billion U.S. The company also raised its full-year guidance to a range of $5.30 to $5.50 U.S. AT&T reported a 1% dip in overall revenue, to $30.9 billion U.S., which included a 10% gain in wireless service revenue, the biggest portion of sales. The company said earnings slipped nearly 2% to 54 cents U.S. per share. Microsoft launched Windows 7, which is expected to spur many PC users to change their operating system for the first time in about eight years. The government reported that initial jobless claims jumped by 11,000 to 531,000 in the week ended Oct. 17. This was more than 515,000 claims forecast by Briefing.com consensus. The government said the continuing claims fell by 98,000 to about 5.9 million. A report on Leading Economic Indicators was to be released at 10 a.m. ET. Also at that time, the housing price index from the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency will come out. Treasury prices fell, raising the yields for the benchmark 10-year note to 3.42%. Prices and yields move in opposite directions. The price of a barrel of oil tailed off 79 cents to $80.63 U.S. Gold prices lost $9 to $1,055 U.S. an ounce.