North American stocks may open little changed Tuesday morning, as oil prices rise and a report showed that Canadian retail sales slumped in September.

Plummeting gas prices and slumping auto sales drove total retail sales down 1.2% in September, Statistics Canada reported today.

This decline limited retail sales for the third quarter to about half the rate of the previous two quarters.

Separately, the government agency said the composite leading index rose by 0.2% in October, continuing its string of moderate growth over the last five months.

The Canadian dollar opened at 87.2¢, up 0.04 of a cent.

Oil prices rose Tuesday but stayed within the range the market has maintained since early October. Light sweet crude for January delivery was up 19¢ to US$58.99 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

In business news, Onex Corp. has priced the initial public offering of shares in subsidiary Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc. at US$26 per share, raising US$1.43 billion for 43% of the aircraft-component maker.

Saskatchewan Wheat Pool Inc. said it will go to court to clarify an order issued Monday by the federal pension watchdog, which says the company must make payments to address the funding shortfall at its employee pension plan by Nov. 30.

In earnings news, Deere reported a surprise 19% jump in fiscal fourth-quarter net income on surging agricultural profits and better pricing. The company warned it expects a slowdown for construction and forestry production in the just-started fiscal year.

Overseas, the CAC-40 rose 0.4% in Paris.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index gained 8.2 points, or 0.99%, to finish at 15,734.14 on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

In Hong Kong,the blue-chip Hang Seng Index rose 53.67 points, or 0.3%, to 19,008.30.

Toronto stocks moved higher Monday, as a strong day in the resource sectors, buoyed by merger news in the U.S. mining sector, lifted the market overall.

The S&P/TSX composite index gained 43.76, or 0.35%, to 12,416.63.

Seven of the 10 TSX main groups were up.

Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc. made a US$52.9 billion friendly offer for Phelps Dodge Corp., which would create the world’s biggest publicly traded copper miner. Investors bid up other mining companies on heightened expectations of other mergers and acquisitions in the sector. In New York, Phelps Dodge stock rose 27%, while Freeport fell 3%.

TD Bank shares finished down 30¢ to $67.45 after the bank announced its $3.6 billion bid to privatize TD Banknorth.

The S&P TSX Venture Exchange moved up 16.92, or 0.65%, to 2,630.50.

In New York, markets were mixed as investors took in good corporate earnings news and the lower price of oil, but also elected to take a breather after several sessions of gains.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 26.02 points at 12,316.54, the S&P 500 fell 0.70 of a point to 1,400.50 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 6.86 points to 2,452.72.