North American markets are expected to open higher Friday following positive earnings results from technology bellwether Dell.

After the closing bell Thursday, computer maker Dell reported its net income surged 28% in its fiscal first quarter and issued an optimistic outlook for its current quarter.

In this morning’s economic news, the U.S. Labor Department said import prices rose 0.8% in April, the slowest pace in three months as oil prices fell from record highs. The April increase was down from a 2% rise in March that was the largest in nearly 15 years. Economists had expected a 0.5% increase in import prices last month.

The U.S. Commerce said March business inventories rose 0.4% to a seasonally adjusted US$1.295 trillion, after rising an unrevised 0.5% in February. The increase came in short of expectations on Wall Street, which was looking for a 0.6% gain in inventories.

Later this morning the University of Michigan consumer sentiment index will be released. Economists expect the index to have firmed a bit to 88.0 in May from 87.7 in the final April reading.

Here at home, Statistics Canada said the transportation equipment sector put the brakes on manufacturing shipments which dropped 2.4% to $49.7 billion in March. This followed a 0.7% decline in February and largely wiped out the 2.6% gain manufacturers registered in January.

In other earnings news, Air Canada’s parent company is reporting a first-quarter loss of $77 million, a sharp improvement of the $304 million loss posted a year earlier while the airline was operating under bankruptcy-court protection.

On Thursday, North American markets suffered triple-digit losses as resource stocks tumbled on Bay Street, and Wall Street was spooked by a second-quarter profit warning from Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

At close, Toronto’s S&P/TSX composite index was down 114.71 points or 1.21% at 9,331.71, while the S&P/TSX Venture composite index fell 30.48 points or 1.83% to 1,637.79.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average tumbled 110.77 points of 1.08% to 10,189.48. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite was 7.67 points or 0.39% lower at 1,963.88, while the S&P 500 index lost 11.75 points or 1.00% to 1,159.36.

In Toronto, stocks were hit by the double-whammy of falling oil and gold prices. Oil prices dropped for a second straight session, with a barrel of light crude was quoted at $48.54, down $1.91, on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Meanwhile, the June contract for bullion on the Nymex lost $5.70 to US$422.20 an ounce.

On Wall Street, investors’ fears of an economic slowdown were heightened after Wal-Mart missed Wall Street’s profit expectations for the quarter and, more important, said high gasoline prices have hurt customer spending and could affect the company’s second-quarter results.