This is your Benzinga news summary and traders' outlook for Wednesday, August 10, 2011, covering headlines from overnight and Wednesday's pre-market session. Today in domestic pre-market trading, U.S. equity futures are trading lower as traders take profits after a 400 point rally in the Dow yesterday. At last check, Dow futures are down about 80 points and the U.S. dollar trades lower near the $74.00 level. Earlier this morning, Citigroup upgraded OpenTable (NASDAQ:
OPEN
) to Buy, Bank of America upgraded Sherwin-Williams (NYSE:
SHW
) to Buy and upgraded Monsanto (NYSE:
MON
) to Buy as well. View all of
today's upgrades here
. Wunderlich downgraded Walt Disney (NYSE:
DIS
) to Hold and Bank of America downgraded Eastman Chemical (NYSE:
EMN
) to Neutral. View all of
today's downgrades here
. Jefferies lowered Cree's (NASDAQ:
CREE
) price target to $38 from $46 and Evercore Partners lowered Walt Disney's (NYSE:
DIS
) price target to $44 from $50. View all other
of today's analyst ratings here
Overseas, European markets were higher in afternoon trading. Britain's FTSE 100 added 0.8% and France's CAC 40 rose 0.4% on the session. Asian stocks ended the session higher as well. China's Shanghai Index added 0.9%, Japan's Nikkei 225 increased 1.1%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index jumped 2.3%. On the economic calendar, MBA mortgage applications came in at 21.7% versus a 7.1% prior reading. Wholesale inventories are set to be reported at 10:00 a.m. and the monthly budget statement is due at 2:00 p.m. On the commodity front,
gold
and
silver
futures are positive in pre-market trading, with gold about 20 points off new all-time highs; currently at $1762.50 per ounce level. Energy futures are moving higher with
crude oil
near $82.50 per barrel and
gasoline
futures trading higher by over 2%.
Natural Gas
futures are trading slightly lower and
copper
futures are flat this morning. On the earnings front yesterday, Walt Disney (NYSE:
DIS
) reported Q3 EPS of $0.78 on revenues of $10.68 billion; The Street was looking for $0.73 per share on revenues of $10.45 billion. In corporate news, Europeans biggest bank HSBC announced it would sell its U.S. credit card business to Capital One (NYSE:
COF
) for about $32.7 billion. Also, Apple (NASDAQ:
AAPL
) has been granted a preliminary injunction
against Samsung to halt sales of the Android-based Galaxy Tab 10.1
in all of the European Union with the exception of the Netherlands. Finally, Lear Corporation (NYSE:
LEA
) today announced that CFO Matt Simoncini will succeed Bob Rossiter,
who will step down as CEO, president and a director of Lear on September 1, 2011
and remain in an advisory role until May 2012 to assist with the transition. This concludes your news summary for August 10, 2011.
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