News Summary for August 4, 2011

This is your Benzinga news summary and traders' outlook for Thursday, August 4, 2011, covering headlines from overnight and Thursday's pre-market session. Today in domestic pre-market trading, U.S. equity futures are set for a weak morning as traders wait for the jobless claims data. At last check, Dow futures are down about 60 points and the U.S. dollar trades higher near the $75 level. Earlier this morning, Miller Tabak upgraded Talbots (NYSE:

) to Neutral, Piper Jaffray upgraded McDonald's (NYSE:

) to Overweight, and Goldman Sachs upgraded Tiffany's (NYSE:

) to Neutral. View all of

. Piper Jaffray downgraded Allergan (NYSE:

) to Neutral and JP Morgan downgraded Entropic Communications (NASDAQ:

) to Neutral. View all of

. JP Morgan lowered MEMC Electronic's (NYSE:

) price target to $7.25 from $9 and Deutsche Bank lowered Leap Wireless' (NASDAQ:

) price target to $13 from $18. View all other

. Overseas, European markets were mixed this morning. Britain's FTSE 100 fell 0.8% and France's CAC 40 added 0.1% on the session. Asian stocks ended the mixed lower as well. China's Shanghai Index added 0.2%, Japan's Nikkei 225 gained 0.2%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index slid 0.5%. Also, the Bank of Japan took action to slow down the rise of the yen by easing monetary policy and selling one trillion yen, which equates to $12.6 billion. The USD/JPY currency pair is trading over 3% higher. On the economic calendar, initial and continuing claims are set to be reported at 8:30 a.m. On the commodity front,

and

futures are flat in pre-market trading, with gold near the $1670 per ounce level. Energy futures are lower with

down about $1 at $91.12 per barrel and

futures trading lower by about 1%.

futures are trading flat this morning and

futures are lower by 0.5% this morning. On the earnings front, Kraft (NYSE:

) reported Q2 EPS of $0.62 on revenues of $13.88 billion; The Street was looking for $0.58 per share on revenues of $13.15 billion. General Motors (NYSE:

) reported Q2 EPS of $1.54 on revenues of $39.4 billion; The Street was looking for $1.20 per share on revenues of $36.71 billion. DirecTV (NYSE:

) reported Q2 EPS of $0.91 on revenues of $6.6 billion; The Street was looking for $0.85 per share on revenues of $6.54 billion. In corporate news, Kraft Foods (NYSE:

) announced that its Board of Directors intends to create

: A high-growth global snacks business and a high-margin North American grocery business. This concludes your news summary for August 4, 2011.