Financial Breakfast: Morning News Summary for September 14, 2011

This is your Benzinga news summary and traders' outlook for Wednesday, September 14, 2011, covering headlines from overnight and Wednesday'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 flat near the $77.50 level.Earlier this morning, Jefferies upgraded VCA Antech (NYSE: VCA) to Hold. View all of today's upgrades here.Bank of America downgraded Core Labs (NYSE: CLB) to Underperform and Jefferies downgraded Trina Solar (NYSE: TSL) to Hold. View all of today's downgrades here.Morgan Keegan lowered Riverbed Tech's (NASDAQ: RVBD) price target to $30 from $45 and Goldman Sachs lowered Best Buy's (NYSE: BBY) price target to $27 from $29. View all other of today's analyst ratings here.Overseas, European markets are higher in afternoon trading. Britain's FTSE 100 gained 1.5%, Germany's DAX jumped 2.3% and France's CAC 40 added 1.8% on the session. Asian stocks ended the session mixed. China's Shanghai Index added 0.55%, Japan's Nikkei 225 lost 1.1%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index gained 0.08%.Moody's cut the credit ratings of two large French banks, Societe Generale and Credit Agricole, citing their exposure to Greek debt.On the economic calendar, MBA Mortgage Applications came in at +6.3% versus (4.9%) prior. PPI, Core PPI, and Retail Sales are set to be reported at 8:30 a.m. Business Inventories is due at 10:00 a.m. and Crude Inventories is to report at 10:30 a.m.On the commodity front, gold and silver futures are mixed in pre-market trading, with gold trading higher by about 0.1%. Energy futures are lower with crude oil down about 62 cents near the $89.58 level and gasoline futures are trading lower by about 0.2%. Natural Gas futures are unchanged and copper futures are trading 0.3% lower this morning.In corporate news, The Board of Directors of Philip Morris International Inc (NYSE: PM) today increased the company's regular quarterly dividend by 20.3%, to an annualized rate of $3.08 per common share.Lattice Semiconductor (NASDAQ: LSCC) lowers its third quarter revenue to be flat to down 4% on a sequential basis. This compares to prior guidance of flat to up 5% on a sequential basis. The revised guidance reflects a recent softening of demand primarily in the communications business.This concludes your news summary for September 14, 2011. Want to receive the morning news summary to you inbox every morning? Click here to subscribe now.