North American markets finished the week on a positive note as stronger gold prices, reassuring comments about oil prices and some good economic news pushed stocks higher on both sides of the border.

At close on Friday, the S&P/TSX was 43.29 points or 0.49% at 8788.93. For the week, the TSX was off 0.29%. The TSX Venture exchange advanced 6.09 points or 0.37% on Friday to 1662.72; that meant a loss for the week of 1.9%.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial climbed 38.93 points or 0.39% to 9933.38, for a loss of 1.2% on the week. The Nasdaq closed up 8.48 points or 0.45% to 1911.50 (down 0.44% for the week), while the S&P 500 was up 4.91 points or 0.45% at 1108.20 (down 1.2% since last Friday).

The Canadian dollar was up 0.21 of a cent to US79.82¢ late in the day after Statistics Canada said manufacturing shipments were up 0.8% in August, rising for a ninth-straight month.

In Toronto, the TSX was powered mostly by resource and financial stocks.

Gold stocks jumped 1.69% on the day as
gold futures climbed — December delivery rose 60¢ to close at US$420.10 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange after climbing as high as $423 earlier. It’s down $4.40 for the week.

Crude futures closed just pennies short of US$55 a barrel Friday. November crude closed at US$54.93, up 17¢ for the session after briefly tapping an intraday high of $55 for the first time ever. For the week, prices were up $1.62 a barrel on concerns over dwindling heating-oil supplies for the winter.
Friday’s increase helped the TSX energy sub group; it was up 0.37%.

Financial shares, which make up about one-third of the overall index, got a lift from comments that Ottawa would not stand in the way of mergers between banks and insurance companies. The new chairman of the House of Commons finance committee Massimo Pacetti said in an interview that the government would study the idea if a proposal was presented.

Financials stocks gained 0.58%, but they were held back by losses by a number of Canadian insurance companies that were feeling the fallout from New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s announcement he was suing U.S. insurance brokerage giant Marsh & McLennan. U.S. insurance stocks have been hit hard by the news, announced Thursday.

U.S. markets, meanwhile, got some help from reassurances from U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan about high oil prices.

Greenspan predicted that the global economy will adjust to the recent surge in prices by boosting energy exploration and production and by increasing fuel efficiency. But he conceded that the transition period could feature unexpected bumps.

Markets also cheered consumer data out Friday that showed September retail sales in the U.S. up by a strong 1.5% — the best showing since March — pushed by a 4.2% jump at auto dealers. Another set of numbers wasn’t as cheery, however. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index fall to 87.5 in October from 94.2 in September. Analysts had expected the widely watched index to edge higher.