North American stocks are expected to open lower Wednesday as bond yields continued to climb overnight.

The benchmark U.S. Treasury bond’s yield stayed near five-year highs at about 5.3% overnight, up from 5.27% Tuesday.

In today’s economic news, U.S. retail sales during May surged at a rate more than double the expected number in a broad-based increase.

Retail sales increased 1.4% in May, after dipping by a revised 0.1% in April, the U.S. Commerce Department said.

Today’s main economic event comes at 14:00 ET, with the release of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s Beige Book report, which provides anecdotal information on the U.S. economy.

Here at home, manufacturing shipments edged down in April, largely due to a decrease in the automotive sector, Statistics Canada reported.

The Canadian dollar continued its pullback against the American dollar, losing 0.36 of cent to US93.37¢ at the open.

Overseas, four international banks were indicted in Milan Wednesday on charges related to the 2003 failure of the Parmalat dairy empire, Europe’s largest corporate bankruptcy. An Italian judge issued the indictments against Citigroup Inc., UBS AG, Deutsche Bank AG and Morgan Stanley for failure to take measures that would have prevented the crimes that led to the company’s failure.

Crude-oil futures dropped 20¢ to US$65.86 a barrel, and gold futures continues to fall, losing $3.90 to US$649.20 an ounce.

North American stocks fell Tuesday, as investors worried over inflationary pressures and rising interest rates.

The S&P/TSX composite index gave up 108.49 points, or 0.78%, to 13,724.33 in a volatile day of trading which say the market rise to 13,852.07 and drop as low as 13,721.71.

The S&P/TSX Venture composite index fell 63.77 points, or 2%, to 3,129.92.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 129.95, or 0.97%, to 13,295.01, the Nasdaq composite index gave up 22.38, or 0.87%, to 2,549.77, and the S&P 500 dropped 16.12, or 1.07%, to 1,493.00.