North American markets are expected to open flat Monday as investors as investors await a torrent of corporate earnings reports. IBM and 3M kick off a heavy week today.

Meanwhile, the price of crude oil surged past US$55 per barrel in overnight trading amid continued uncertainty over production and high demand.

In this morning’s economic news, Statistics Canada said foreign investors increased their holdings of Canadian securities in August by $897 million. While foreign investors continued to invest in Canadian bonds and stocks, they sold off a substantial amount of money market paper,

Meanwhile, Canadian investors sold off $1.1 billion in foreign securities, as they divested roughly an equal amount of foreign stocks and bonds, StatsCan said.

On Tuesday, analysts are widely expecting the central bank will nudge up its trend-setting overnight rate by a quarter of a percentage point, to 2.5% from its current 2.25%.

In other business news, the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the operations of a Thomson Financial division that collects information on stock ownership, the company revealed Monday. Thomson said it had received a subpoena from the U.S. stocks regulator for documents on the operations of its capital markets intelligence business.

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 composite index was up 43.29 points or 0.49% at 8,788.93. For the week, the TSX was off 0.29%.

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.

The TSX Venture exchange advanced 6.09 points or 0.37% on Friday to 1,662.72; 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 9,933.38, for a loss of 1.2% on the week. The Nasdaq closed up 8.48 points or 0.45% to 1,911.50 (down 0.44% for the week), while the S&P 500 was up 4.91 points or 0.45% at 1,108.20 (down 1.2% since last Friday).