Investors are waking up today to news that TD Bank is in talks to merge its TD Waterhouse unit with discount brokerage E*Trade Financial. TD Bank is likely to be the biggest shareholder in the merged company.

Meanwhile Wall Street futures are mixed, pointing to a slow start to regular trading ahead of the next wave of quarterly earnings news.

The only major economic release today is out of the U.S. where the Labor Department is reporting that import prices rose in December 0.2%, less than half November’s 0.5% rate. Export prices increased by 0.2%. Economists had expected import prices to climb between 0.3% to 0.6%.

Markets in Europe are higher at midday. London’s FTSE index is up 0.21%. Frankfurt’s DAX is up 0.6% and Paris’s CAC 40 has risen 1.03%..

In Tokyo, stocks fell as investors took profits in technology and export-related blue chips. The Nikkei stock average closed down 115.37 points, or 1.05%, at 10,849.68 points.

Hong Kong shares ended at a fresh 30-month high on end-of-the-day gains in blue-chip stocks. The Hang Seng Index ended up 44.43 points, or 0.3%, at 13396.65, after spending most of the day in negative territory.

On Monday, the Toronto S&P/TSX composite index rose 28.18 points to 8,380.37 on gains in energy and technology stocks. The TSX Venture Exchange gained 12.41 points to 1,816.98. The Dow industrials rose 26.29 points to 10,485.18. The Nasdaq composite index climbed 24.86 points to 2,111.78. The S&P 500 index gained 5.37 to 1,127.23.