Benzinga Market Primer, Tuesday August 14

U.S. markets are poised to open higher off the heels of slightly better than an expected spate of economic releases from Germany, France and UK. The Dow Jones is up 25 points to 13159; S&P is up 3.1 points to 1406.10 and the NASDAQ up 5.1 points to 2733.5.

• The BOJ said it would not dismiss the notion of more stimuli to stave off the further risk of economic contraction due to the European sovereign debt crisis. The Yen lost ground in Asian trading versus all 16 major currencies. However, the Nikkei 225 Stock Average rose for the fist time in three sessions 0.5 percent to 8929.88.
• MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.3 percent
• Hang sang Index was up 220 points to 20291 up 1.05 percent on the session

In Europe/UK

• European stocks were higher as Germany's GDP growth slowed less than was forecasted. A rise 0.3 versus 0.2 for the second quarter had The German DAX was up 65 points to 6965.
• France CAC Index rose 20 points to 3446. The Bank of France said not to rule a recession as Euro zone GDP dropped 0.2 percent year/ year.
• In UK trading the FTSE rose 30 points to 5862 despite inflation accelerating. Consumer prices rose 2.6 percent from a year earlier and up from June's 2.4 percent increase. UK housing prices rose 2.3 percent in June from the same period last year.

Commodities

• In mid morning European trading Brent crude oil prices were up 39 cents to 113.99 a barrel, while WTI crude was trading up 33 cents to 93.08 a barrel.
• Gold prices were trading up $.40 to $1615 an ounce.
• Silver price were up 0.33 percent to $27.86 or 7 cents an ounce.

Currencies

• EUR/USD is up marginally to 1.2353.
• USD/JPY in European trading is trading at 78.312 basically unchanged from New York trading.
• USD/CAD is up .023 percent to0.9930
• GBP/USD is trading 1.5697 confined in tight range. Sterling is up 0.10 percent on the day
• EUR/JPY is trading up 0.46 percent to 97.048
• EUR/GBP remains unchanged at 0.7871

Key Earnings Before the Bell

• Home Depot HD, Este Lauder EL, Saks SKS, TJX TJX
• 7:30 EST NFIB –Small Business Optimism Index –consensus 91.3 last 91.4
• 8:30 EST - PPI consensus 0.2 percent, prior 0.1% Core PPI 0.2 percent last 0.2 percent
• 8:30 EST - Retail Sales consensus 0.3 percent, prior 0.5 percent
• 10:00 EST- Business Inventories consensus 0.2 percent, last 0.3 percent