U.S. stock futures fell Friday after General Electric reported in-line results.

GE posted a 14% rise in third-quarter net income amid the August sale of its plastics business and charges in its consumer-finance operations.

The economic calendar for Friday includes data on U.S. retail sales and the U.S. producer price index.

Also in focus will be a speech by U.S. Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke to a Dallas conference at 9 a.m.

Here at home, Statistics Canada said investment in non-residential building construction marked its fourth consecutive year of uninterrupted growth, fuelled mostly by sustained commercial investment in Central Canada and Alberta.

Non-residential investment hit $10.4 billion in the third quarter, up 4.9% from the second quarter.

Among stocks to watch, Citigroup said late Thursday that it has merged its investment-banking and alternative-investments businesses into a single group and has hired former Morgan Stanley executive Vikram Pandit to head the unit.

In M&A news, Oracle made a US$6.66 billion offer for business-management software maker BEA Systems, which has been under pressure from investor Carl Icahn to consider a sale of the company.

Crude-oil prices rose 10¢ to US$83.18 a barrel.

In European action, the French CAC 40 index lost 1.1% and the German DAX 30 index fell 0.5%, with tech stocks among the biggest decliners to mirror Thursday’s move lower in the U.S.

Asian indexes declined amid profit taking, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 average falling 0.73% after gaining 2.3% over the previous three days.

The Canadian dollar opened at US102.23¢, down 0.2 of a cent.

Toronto stocks fell late in the session Thursday, led by technology and financial shares as investors moved to lock in profits.

The S&P/TSX composite index closed the day down 46.75 points, or 0.33%, at 14,229.44.

U.S. and Canadian tech stocks took a dive in afternoon trade that was spurred by downbeat brokerage comments on Baidu.com Inc., China’s top Web search firm.

The junior S&P/TSX Venture composite index bucked the day’s downtrend, adding 19.73 points, or 0.68%, to 2,918.97.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 63.57 points, or 0.45%, to end at 14,015.12. The S&P 500 was down 8.06 points, or 0.52%, at 1,554.41. The Nasdaq composite index was down 39.41 points, or 1.40%, to close at 2,772.20.