Stocks are expected to fall slightly at Monday’s open as traders prepare for the first full week of earnings season and digest concerns about the semiconductor industry after a ratings downgrade by Merrill Lynch analysts.

Merrill Lynch on Monday downgraded the global semiconductor industry to “underweight” from “overweight” due to a number of factors, including the slowing inventory rebuild in the chip sector and huge spending on new production equipment, which could lead to oversupply next year.

In this morning’s economic news, Statistics Canada reported that investment in non-residential building construction rose slightly for a second consecutive quarter to stand at $6.7 billion.

Total investment for the first six months reached a mid-year record of $13.3 billion, StatsCan said.

There are no major economic releases from the United States this morning.

At midday, most European markets were mixed, with the Financial Times-Stock Exchange 100-share index in London off 0.3% while Frankfurt’s Xetra DAX was down 0.2%.

Asian stock markets closed mixed overnight. Tokyo’s Nikkei rose 158.75 points, or 1.39%, to 11,582.28.

In Hong Kong, the key Hang Seng Index slipped 11.25 points, or 0.09%, to 12,191.01.

On Friday, a solid earnings report from General Electric sent stock markets higher. The S&P/TSX composite index rose 52.8 points to 8,473.18, but the benchmark index was down 14.13 points for the week.

The junior S&P/TSX Venture composite index gained 8.18 points to 1,582.97.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average climbed 41.66 points to 10,213.22 to lose 69.61 points on the week. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index was up 11.01 points at 1,946.33 on Friday, but lost 3.5% on the week.

The S&P 500 index added 3.7 points at 1,112.81.

Corporate earnings reports are due this week from the likes of Intel Corp., Citigroup Inc., Johnson & Johnson, IBM and CanWest Global Communications. In addition, U.S. and Canadian inflation reports are expected Friday.