Markets were mixed Wednesday morning as gold and energy shares kept Toronto in the red, while New York traded higher on some good economic news.

At midday, the S&P/TSX was down 1.46 points or 0.02% at 8816.72, after posting a 69-point gain Tuesday. The TSX Venture exchange slipped 12.94 points or 0.78% to 1639.68, continuing on a losing trend from Tuesday. In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was ahead by 53.16 points or 0.54% at 9941.64, while the Nasdaq had advanced 28.29 points or 1.47% at 1957.08, and the S&P 500 was up by 6.73 points or 0.61% to 1117.82.

The Canadian dollar was at US81.57¢, up 0.04 of a cent.

On Bay Street, industrials (up 0.71%), technology (0.07%) and financials (0.46%) were ahead but they were offset by falling gold (down 1.99%) and energy shares (0.96%).

Among the most actives, Nortel Networks Corp. was off 14¢ or 3.36% to $4.03 after the company said it won’t be releasing restated financial results until the middle of next month. Bombardier Inc. B shares were up 5¢ or 1.89% to$2.70 after a Bombardier joint venture, Bombardier Sifang Power Transportation Ltd., this month won an order to deliver 20 high-speed trains to China, with Bombardier’s share of the US$424 million deal worth US$263 million. Encana Corp. jumped 16¢ or 0.27% to $60.41 after it said higher production and rising energy prices resulted in a 36% jump in third quarter profits.

In U.S. economic news, orders to U.S. factories for big-ticket durable goods edged up 0.2 percent in September while sales of new homes surged to the third highest monthly level on record. The Commerce Department said Wednesday that the increase in orders for durable goods — items expected to last three or more years — followed a decline of 0.6 percent in August. The August drop had earlier been reported as a more modest 0.3 percent decrease.

In a second report, the department said that new home sales rose 3.5% last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.21 million units, the third highest level on record behind the record rate of 1.27 million set in March and a rate of 1.25 million in May.

The 3.5% increase in new home sales took economists by surprise. They had been expecting a decline. Sales rose a revised 5.8% in August following an 8.1% decline in August.

On Wall Street, semiconductor, biotech, drug, airline and retail were leading the way higher.

In overseas markets, London’s FTSE 100 index traded up 23.4 points at 4,606.8. Frankfurt’s DAX was up 0.23%, while the Paris CAC 40 gained 0.54%.

Asian stock markets closed mixed Wednesday, with key indexes edging higher in Tokyo.

Tokyo’s Nikkei Stock Average of 225 issues rose 19.49 points to 10,691.95.

The Hang Seng Index slipped 13.64 points to 12,838.71.