North American stocks may advance at Wednesday’s open, a day after markets turned sharply lower on U.S. housing market jitters.

There are no major economic announcements from Statistics Canada today.

The Canadian dollar opened at US99.65¢, up nine-tenths of a cent from Tuesday’s close.

South of the border, U.S. weekly energy inventories are due out at 10:30 ET, with crude-oil futures up 71¢ to US$97.04 a barrel earlier today.

Gold futures hit new record highs Wednesday, reaching US$894.40 an ounce.

Wednesday’s big earnings report will come after the close of trade, when aluminum giant Alcoa is expected to report a 55% drop in earnings per share, excluding restructuring charges.

In M&A news, the Vancouver company that built the Canadarm, which has been used on the space shuttle and the International Space Station, is selling its space and satellite business to a big U.S. defence contractor for more than $1.3 billion. MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. said late Tuesday it will sell the business to Alliant Techsystems of Minneapolis for $1.325 billion in cash.

Overseas, the FTSE 100 dropped 1.4% in London, while he Nikkei 225 ended 0.5% higher in Tokyo

On Tuesday, Toronto stocks ended lower following a see-saw session, even as the price of gold hit a new record high.

After being up as much as 152 points, the S&P/TSX composite closed down 77.12 points, or 0.57% to close at 13,541.75.

The TSX gold subgroup climbed 4.13% after gold futures closed at a new all-time high.

Gold for February delivery closed at US$880.30, up US$18.30 an ounce, a new all-time closing high.

The junior S&P/TSX Venture composite closed flat, rising 0.23 points, or 0.01%, to end the session at 2,820.21.

The Canadian dollar climbed 0.12 of a cent to close at US99.56¢.

In New York, markets were weighed down by housing market jitters.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 238.42 points, or 1.86%, closing at 12,589.07. The S&P 500 fell 25.99 points, or 1.84% to settle at 1,390.19.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index saw its eighth day of losses, sliding 58.95 points, or 2.36%, to close at 2,440.51.