News Summary for July 22, 2011

This is your Benzinga news summary and traders' outlook for Friday, July 22, 2011, covering headlines from overnight and Friday's pre-market session. Today in domestic pre-market trading, U.S. equity futures are trading higher following the approval of a deeper Greek rescue plan. The U.S. dollar and the Euro are both flat this morning. Earlier this morning, Benchmark upgraded DigitalGlobe (NYSE:

) to Buy and Wunderlich Securities upgraded EV Energy Partners (NASDAQ:

) to Buy. View all of

. Deutsche Bank downgraded SFN Group (NYSE:

) to Hold and William Blair downgraded Microsoft (NASDAQ:

) to Market Perform. View all of

. JP Morgan lowered Whirlpool's (NYSE:

) price target to $82 from $90, and Wedbush raised Goodrich's (NYSE:

) price target to $119 from $102. View all other

. Overseas, European markets were higher this morning. Britain's FTSE 100 added about 0.9% and France's CAC 40 gained 1% on the session. Asian stocks were higher on the session as well. China's Shanghai Index gained 0.2%, Japan's Nikkei 225 jumped 1.2%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index spiked 2.1%. There are no economic releases today. On the commodity front,

and

futures are positive in pre-market trading, with gold nearing the $1600 per ounce level. Energy futures are flat with

near the $99.50 per barrel level, and

futures are trading near the 3.077 level; however,

futures are up over 0.5%. Finally,

futures are up about 0.5% as well. On the earnings front, Verizon Wireless (NYSE:

) reported Q2 EPS of $0.57 on revenues of $27.54 billion; The Street was looking for $0.55 per share on revenues of $27.43 billion. Caterpillar (NYSE:

) reported Q2 EPS of $1.72 on revenues of $14.2 billion; The Street was looking for $1.79 per share on revenues of $13.52 billion. Xerox (NYSE:

) reported Q2 EPS of $0.27 on revenues of $5.6 billion; The Street was looking for $0.24 per share on revenues of $5.6 billion. Also, General Electric (NYSE:

) reported Q2 EPS of $0.34 on revenues of $35.63 billion; The Street was looking for $0.32 per share on revenues of $34.72 billion. Read more

. Yesterday, Microsoft (NASDAQ:

) reported Q2 EPS of $0.69 on revenues of $17.37 billion; The Street was looking for $0.58 per share on revenues of $17.25 billion. Read more

. In corporate news, The Verizon Board of Directors

as president and CEO of Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:

), effective Aug. 1. Ivan G. Seidenberg will step down from the CEO role but remain chairman. This concludes your news summary for July 22, 2011.