Financial Breakfast: Morning News Summary for September 16, 2011

This is your Benzinga news summary and traders' outlook for Friday, September 16, 2011, covering headlines from overnight and Friday's pre-market session. Today in domestic pre-market trading, U.S equity futures are trading lower. At last check, Dow futures are down by about 50 points or 0.44% and the U.S. dollar trades higher near the $77.00 level. Earlier this morning, Goldman Sachs upgraded Gilead Sciences GILD to Buy. View all of today's upgrades here. Bank of America downgraded Veeco Instruments VECO to Neutral. View all of today's downgrades here. JP Morgan lowered Research in Motion's RIMM price target to $24 from $30. View all other of today's analyst ratings here. Overseas, European markets are higher in afternoon trading. Britain's FTSE 100 gained 0.7%, Germany's DAX jumped 1.4% and France's CAC 40 added 0.6% on the session. Asian stocks ended the session higher. China's Shanghai Index added 0.1%, Japan's Nikkei 225 jumped 2.2%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index gained 1.4%. On the economic calendar, TIC Flows are set to be reported at 9:00 a.m. and University of Michigan Confidence Index is due at 9:55 a.m. On the commodity front, gold and silver futures are higher in pre-market trading, with gold trading higher by about 0.33%. Energy futures are mixed with crude oil down about 15 cents near the $89.25 level and gasoline futures are trading higher by about 0.5%. Natural Gas futures are down over 0.3% and copper futures are trading 0.9% higher this morning. On the earnings front yesterday, Research in Motion RIMM reported Q2 EPS of $0.80 on revenues of $4.17 billion; The Street was looking for $0.87 per share on revenues of $4.47 billion. This caused shares to fall about 20% after-hours. In corporate news, Allied World Assurance Company Holdings, AG AWH announced today that it has mutually agreed with Transatlantic Holdings, Inc. TRH to terminate their previously announced merger agreement. Transatlantic Board authorizes $600 million share repurchase program after merger termination with Allied World, which adds $455 million to the Company's existing share repurchase authorization. This concludes your news summary for September 16, 2011. Want to receive the morning news summary to you inbox every morning? Click here to subscribe now.