News Summary for August 15, 2011

This is your Benzinga news summary and traders' outlook for Monday, August 15, 2011, covering headlines from overnight and Monday's pre-market session. Today in domestic pre-market trading, U.S. equity futures are trading higher. At last check, Dow futures are up about 40 points and the U.S. dollar trades flat near the $74.75 level. Earlier this morning, Goldman Sachs upgraded Family Dollar (NYSE:

) to Buy and upgraded IBM (NYSE:

) to Buy. View all of

. Goldman Sachs downgraded Lexmark (NYSE:

) to Sell and Bank of America downgraded Illinois Tool Works (NYSE:

) to Underperform. View all of

. Sterne Agee lowered UMB Financial's (NASDAQ:

) price target to $46 from $50 and Goldman Sachs added Visa (NYSE:

) to its Conviction-Buy List. View all other

. Overseas, European markets were higher in afternoon trading. Britain's FTSE 100 added 0.4%, Germany's DAX gained 0.3% and France's CAC 40 rose 0.1% on the session. Asian stocks ended the session higher as well. China's Shanghai Index added 1.3%, Japan's Nikkei 225 gained 1.4%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index jumped 3.3%. On the economic calendar, Empire Manufacturing Index is set to be reported at 8:30 a.m., net TIC-flows are due at 9:00 a.m., and the NAHB Housing Market Index is to report at 10:00 a.m. On the commodity front,

and

futures are flat in pre-market trading, with gold near the $1750 an ounce level. Energy futures are also flat with

near $85.00 per barrel and

futures trading slightly negative.

futures are trading slightly positive and

futures are flat this morning. On the earnings front, Lowe's (NYSE:

) reported Q2 EPS of $0.68 on revenues of $14.5 billion; The Street was looking for $0.66 per share on revenues of $14.75 billion. Estee Lauder (NYSE:

) reported Q4 EPS of $0.25 on revenues of $2.06 billion; The Street was looking for $0.24 per share on revenues of $2.03 billion. In corporate news, Google Inc. (NASDAQ:

) and Motorola Mobility (NYSE:

) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which

, or a total of about $12.5 billion, a premium of 63% to the closing price of Motorola Mobility shares on Friday, August 12, 2011. The transaction was unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies. Also, Time Warner Cable (NYSE:

) has reached a deal to purchase Carlyle Group's Insight Communications for about $3 billion, according to Bloomberg sources. Finally, Transocean (NYSE:

) today

for NOK 26.50 per share or $1.43 billion. This concludes your news summary for August 15, 2011.