US Stock Futures Mostly Higher Ahead Of McDonald's Earnings - Box (NYSE:BOX), McDonald's (NYSE:MCD)

Pre-open movers

US stock futures traded mostly higher in early pre-market trade, ahead of earnings from

McDonald's Corp. MCD

. The Markit PMI manufacturing index for January will be released at 9:45 a.m. ET, while existing home sales data for December and the Conference Board's index of leading indicators for December will be released at 10:00 a.m. ET. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 18 points to 17,755.00, while the Standard & Poor's 500 index futures rose 0.90 points to 2,057.30. Futures for the Nasdaq 100 index declined 0.25 points to 4,264.50.

A Peek Into Global Markets

European markets were higher today, with the Spanish Ibex Index rising 1.01%, STOXX Europe 600 Index gaining 1.47% and German DAX 30 index rising 1.43%. French CAC 40 Index surged 1.61% and London's FTSE 100 Index rose 0.23%. In Asian markets, Japan's Nikkei Stock Average rose 1.05%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index climbed 1.34%, China's Shanghai Composite Index jumped 0.25% and India's Sensex jumped 0.94%. The HSBC China Manufacturing PMI climbed to 49.8 in January, compared to a final reading of 49.6 in December.

Broker Recommendation

Analysts at Credit Suisse downgraded

Precision Castparts Corp.PCP

from Outperform to Neutral. The price target for Precision Castparts has been lowered from $289 to $223. Precision Castparts' shares rose 0.08% to close at $208.91 yesterday.

Breaking news

Starbucks Corporation SBUX reported financial results Thursday for fiscal first quarter ended December 28, 2014. Consolidated net revenues increased 13 percent to $4.8 billion, inline with analyst estimates. Non-GAAP EPS of $0.80 per share was inline with estimates and grew 16 percent over Q1 FY14 non-GAAP EPS. To read the full news, click here.
Box BOX announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 12,500,000 shares of its Class A common stock at a price to the public of $14.00 per share. To read the full news, click here.
The Michaels Companies, Inc. MIK announced Thursday, the pricing of an underwritten public offering by certain of its stockholders of 18,800,000 shares of its common stock at a price of $23.52 per share. To read the full news, click here.
Berkshire Partners LLC, a Boston-based investment firm, together with other investors including New Balance Holding, Inc., a global athletic leader, today announced that they have signed an agreement to purchase The Rockport Company from the adidas Group. To read the full news, click here.

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