A Peek Into The Market Before The Trading Starts

Pre-open movers US stock futures are signaling a weak start on Monday. The European stock markets are on lower side. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 47 points to 10,721, while those for the Nasdaq 100 fell 10.25 points to 1,984 and those for the S&P 500 fell 6.10 points to 1,136. A Peek Into Global Markets Negative sentiments ruled the European markets today. While STOXX Europe 600 Index has lost 0.46%, London's FTSE 100 Index moved down 0.45%. Most of the Asian markets ended in the positive territory, with Japan's Nikkei Stock Average losing 0.25%, Australia's S&P/ASX 200 moving up 0.94%and China's Shanghai Composite gaining 1.73%. Broker Recommendation Piper Jaffray is upping the price target on shares of Riverbed Technology, Inc. RVBD to $44 from $33, but is keeping the Neutral rating on shares. In the research report, Piper Jaffray writes, "We believe Riverbed closed out another impressive quarter and anticipate the company will easily beat the high-end of guidance and provide an outlook for Q4 that is comfortably above consensus. The strength this quarter is coming from large deals, federal vertical strength, market share gains and overall solid execution. Despite the likelihood for better-than-expected results, we believe the stock currently reflects a significant amount of upside and view the shares as fairly valued. We also have broader concerns regarding the growth of the overall WAN optimization market and believe Riverbed's impressive growth is due to market share gains versus solid growth in the overall product category." Shares of Riverbed gained $1.72 on Friday to close at $47.30, a gain of 3.4%. Breaking news

• The U.S. Social Security Administration has selected Accenture ACN as a prime contractor under the Information Technology Support Services Contract that will be used to acquire a wide range of IT systems development and modernization services. To read the full news, click here.
• Eyak Technology, LLC today announced that it has withdrawn its $7.50 per share in cash proposal to acquire all of the outstanding capital stock of GTSI Corp. GTSI. To read the full news, click here.
• AutoNation, Inc. AN today announced that its retail new vehicle unit sales in September 2010, as reported to the applicable automotive manufacturers, totaled 18,040, an increase of 35% as compared to September 2009. To read the full news, click here.
• PDL BioPharma, Inc. PDLI today announced that it has paid the October 1, 2010 special dividend payment of $0.50 per share to all stockholders owning shares of PDL as of September 15, 2010, the record date. To read the full news, click here.

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