Global indicators were mostly negative for North American stock markets, a day after the latest federal budget gave cautious help to Canadian businesses and added incentives for personal saving.

The Canadian dollar opened at US101.76¢ this morning, down about three-hundredths of a cent after jumping 1.31 cents Tuesday to a two-month high on U.S. dollar weakness.

South of the border, the U.S. economy showed additional signs of slowing in January as demand for expensive goods tumbled and a barometer of capital spending by businesses slumped.

Orders for durable goods fell 5.3% last month to a seasonally adjusted $212.80 billion, the U.S. Commerce Department said Wednesday.

Oil prices rose to a new intraday high above US$102 a barrel.

In corporate news, high-tech equipment maker Nortel Networks said it is cutting 2,100 jobs and will transfer 1,000 other jobs to lower-cost countries. Nortel did not provide a breakdown of the job cuts, but the majority of them will be in North America.

Overnight in Europe, the euro broke above the key US$1.50 level for the first time. Analysts said investors are convinced that the U.S. is beset with both inflation and an economic slowdown.

The dollar weakness helped propel gold futures to a new high in London trade. In electronic trading, gold futures traded as high as US$961.30 an ounce.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei closed 1.49% higher. But there were losses on European bourses, as London’s FTSE 100 fell 0.65%, Paris’s CAC 40 gave up 0.6% and Frankfurt’s DAX lost 0.29%.

On Wednesday, Toronto’s S&P/TSX composite index gained 99 points to 13,797, with the main support coming from the energy and financial sectors.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average gained 114 points to 12,684 after IBM raised the bottom end of its profit forecast for 2008 on the back of a new US$15-billion stock buyback plan.

The Nasdaq composite index rose 17 points to 2,344. The S&P 500 index gained about nine points to 1,381.