The Canadian Press

North American stock markets headed for a higher open Wednesday as commodity prices rose and investors look to economic data coming out during the morning.

Traders get key reports Wednesday on Canadian economic growth, U.S. consumer spending and income as well as new home sales that are expected to show further improvement.

The Dow Jones industrial futures rose 26 points to 10,434, the Nasdaq futures gained 5.5 points to 1,846.5 and the S&P 500 futures were up 4.7 points to 1,118.3.

The Canadian dollar was ahead 0.71 cent to US95.24¢.

Research In Motion Ltd. (TSX:RIM) was also in focus as the BlackBerry maker was hit with a widespread service outage that affected BlackBerry users across North and South America on Tuesday evening.

It was unclear when full service would resume but the company said early Wednesday that it appears the problem was related to an upgrade of its BlackBerry Messanger software.

RIM was hit with a similar outage last Thursday.

Contrary to many expectations, stocks around the world have rallied this week — many analysts were anticipating a modest pullback as investors shut up shop for the year by booking profits accumulated during the nine-month bull market.

The February crude contract for February on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose 46¢ to US$74.86 a barrel after a report showed U.S. crude inventories fell last week.

February gold rose 80¢ to US$1,087.50 an ounce while March copper gained 3¢ to US$3.17 a pound.

In other corporate news, Ford Motor Co. said it is close to selling its Volvo unit to China’s Geely. Ford has been trying to unload the division since last year to focus on its core brands, Ford, Lincoln and Mercury. The deal is likely to be finalized in the first quarter and close in the second quarter of 2010.

Goldcorp. Inc. (TSX:G) has until the end of the month to decide whether it will match a competitor’s $254 million bid for Canplats Resources Corp. (TSXV:CPQ), which is developing a gold and silver resource in Mexico. Canplats’ board said late Tuesday that Goldcorp’s friendly takeover offer had been topped by a “financially superior proposal” from Minera Penmont, which is offering a combination of cash and shares of a new mining company.

Mega Uranium Ltd. (TSX:MGA) posted a profit of $21.5 million or 11¢ a share for its 2009 financial year compared with a year-earlier loss of $195.5 million or $1.07 a share. The uranium miner did not disclose any revenues.

Overseas, all major Asian markets rose strongly in the wake of Tuesday’s strong advance on U.S. and Canadian markets existing home sales figures for November came in much stronger than anticipated.

China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.8%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng reversed losses to climb 1.1%.

Tokyo was closed for a holiday.

London’s FTSE 100 index gained 1.1%, Frankfurt’s DAX rose 0.51% and the Paris CAC 40 index climbed 0.76%.