A Peek Into The Market Before The Trading Starts

Pre-open movers US stock futures are higher this morning, as investors are awaiting jobless claims data. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 53 points to 14,604.00 and S&P 500 index futures rose 6 points to 1,552.00. Nasdaq 100 futures gained 10 points to 2,786.25. A Peek Into Global Markets European markets were higher today. The STOXX Europe 600 Index rose 0.59%, London's FTSE 100 Index gained 0.40%, French CAC 40 Index surged 0.91% and German DAX 30 index rose 0.55%. Asian markets ended mixed, with Japan's Nikkei Stock Average falling 1.22%, China's Shanghai Composite rising 0.17% and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 dropping 1.65%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 0.26% and India's Sensex gained 1.52%. Broker Recommendation Analysts at JP Morgan downgraded Apache APA from “overweight” to “neutral.” The target price for Apache has been lowered from $89.50 to $76.50. Apache shares closed at $71.45 yesterday. Breaking news

• UnitedHealth Group UNH reported a 14% drop in its first-quarter earnings. To read the full news, click here.
• Diversified Restaurant Holdings BAGR announced the pricing of a follow-on offering of 6,000,000 shares of its common stock at a price to the public of $5.00 per share. To read the full news, click here.
• Amarin Corporation plc AMRN announced today the approval of the Supplemental New Drug Application (sNDA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to add Chemport, Inc. as an additional Vascepa (icosapent ethyl) active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) supplier. To read the full news, click here.
• Illumina ILMN and Kindstar Global (Kindstar) today announced they are entering into a strategic collaboration whereby Kindstar will validate and implement molecular assays in their laboratories, leveraging Illumina's TruSightTM content sets, Infinium® Dx CytoSNP-12 assay and NuPCRTM reagents. To read the full news, click here.