The Canadian Press

The Toronto stock market could be in for a negative start to the trading day Wednesday as oil prices continue to slide from one-year highs and earnings from U.S. blue chip companies failed to live up to expectations.

U.S. futures pointed to a negative opening in New York where the Dow Jones industrial futures lost 70 points to 9,930, the Nasdaq shed 7.25 points to 1,751 while the S&P futures declined 4.9 points to 1,084.5.

The Canadian dollar continued to lose value against the greenback, a day after losing almost two cents. The slide was triggered by the Bank of Canada, which announced it was keeping its key rate at 0.25%, strongly indicated a rate hike won’t happen until the middle of next year — and delivered a clear warning of the damage being done to the economy by the surging currency.

On Wednesday, the loonie was down 0.46 of a cent to US94.71¢.

North American stock markets lost ground Tuesday amid weak U.S. housing data and despite strong earnings reports from Apple Inc. and industrial equipment maker Caterpillar.

Boeing pressured New York futures after it said lost US$1.6 billion in its third quarter because of problems with its long-delayed 787 and a new version of its 747 jumbo jet. That prompted the airplane maker to slash its profit forecast for 2009. Its stock was down about 2.4% in pre-market trading.

The company also badly missed on revenue, which rose 9% to US$16.69 billion well short of the US$17.16 billion that was forecast.

Elsewhere in the industrials sector, Canadian National Railways (TSX:CNR) said after the market close Tuesday that quarterly profits dropped 16.4% to $461 million. Revenue fell 18% to $1.85 billion. CN’s shares traded down 85¢ to $51.60 in pre-market trading in New York.

Wells Fargo & Co., the fourth largest bank in the U.S., said Thursday its third-quarter profit nearly doubled from a year ago to US$3.2 billion, although it joins other big U.S. banks in reporting higher loan losses.

Wells Fargo, which acquired Wachovia Corp. last fall, says it expects credit losses to peak in 2010.

And Yahoo Inc. reported after Tuesday’s close that it more than triple its third-quarter profit from last year to top analysts’ relatively low expectations for the troubled Internet company.

But the results released Tuesday also showed Yahoo’s revenue fell by at least 12% for the third consecutive quarter. That revenue rut means Yahoo still has a long way to go on its comeback trail and its shares were down about 0.3% in the pre-market.

Toronto energy stocks could be under pressure as the December crude contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange moved down US$1.08 to US$78.04.

Crude surmounted US$80 a barrel early on Tuesday, capping a two-week rally,

But prices declined 52¢ on investor concern sluggish U.S. crude demand may not justify further gains.

Wednesday’s move lower came as the American Petroleum Institute reported that U.S. oil inventories rose last week, rising 3.8 million barrels against the 2.2 million barrels that analysts had expected .Other commodity prices headed lower with the December gold contract on the Nymex down US$6.20 to US$1,052.40 and December copper off 2¢ to US$2.91 a pound.

Asian stock markets faltered Wednesday as weak U.S. housing starts data Tuesday tempered optimism about better-than-expected corporate earnings.

Japan’s market bucked the trend with the benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average recouping early losses to rise 0.1%.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 0.1% and China’s Shanghai benchmark fell 0.2%.

London’s FTSE 100 index lost 0.88%, Frankfurt’s DAX lost 0.79% while the Paris CAC 40 dropped 1.14%.