Financial Breakfast: Morning News Summary for September 15, 2011

This is your Benzinga news summary and traders' outlook for Thursday, September 15, 2011, covering headlines from overnight and Thursday's pre-market session. Today in domestic pre-market trading, U.S equity futures are trading higher. At last check, Dow futures are higher by about 60 points or 0.54% and the U.S. dollar trades lower near the $77.10 level. Earlier this morning, JP Morgan upgraded Dole Foods DOLE to Overweight and Bank of America upgraded Colgate-Palmolive CL to Buy. View all of today's upgrades here. Bank of America downgraded AutoNation AN to Underperform and downgraded Procter & Gamble PG to Neutral. View all of today's downgrades here. Goldman Sachs added JM Smucker SJM to its Conviction Buy-List and removed ConAgra CAG from its Conviction Buy-List. View all other of today's analyst ratings here. Overseas, European markets are higher in afternoon trading. Britain's FTSE 100 gained 1.8%, Germany's DAX jumped 2.6% and France's CAC 40 added 2.5% on the session. Asian stocks ended the session mostly higher. China's Shanghai Index lost 0.2%, Japan's Nikkei 225 added 1.7%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index gained 0.71%. On the economic calendar, CPI, the Current Account Balance, Empire Manufacturing Index, and Jobless Claims are set to report at 8:30 a.m. Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization are to report at 9:15 a.m. and the Philadelphia Fed Index is due at 10:00 a.m. On the commodity front, gold and silver futures are lower in pre-market trading, with gold trading lower by about 1%. Energy futures are higher with crude oil up about 45 cents near the $89.36 level and gasoline futures are trading higher by about 1.1%. Natural Gas futures are up over 1% and copper futures are trading 1.2% higher this morning. On the earnings front, Pier 1 Imports PIR reported Q1 EPS of $0.14 on revenues of $339.6 million; The Street was looking for $0.14 per share on revenues of $332.9 million. In corporate news, Netflix NFLX lowered its third quarter domestic subscriber estimates, however, left financial guidance unchanged. The company now sees 21.8 million streaming subscribers versus 22 million prior and sees DVD subscribers 14.2 million versus 15 million prior. Shares of Netflix fell as low as $178, which is the first time shares traded below $200 since March 10. Tyco International TYC announced earlier today that it has reached an agreement to acquire Visonic Ltd., a developer and manufacturer of electronic security systems and components, for approximately $100 million in cash. Fundtech Ltd. FNDT announced it has received a superior offer from GTCR FundX/A at $23.33 per share in cash. This concludes your news summary for September 15, 2011. Want to receive the morning news summary to you inbox every morning? Click here to subscribe now.