Financial Breakfast: Morning News Summary for October 12, 2011

This is your Benzinga news summary and traders' outlook for Wednesday, October 12, 2011, covering headlines from overnight and Wednesday's pre-market session. Today in domestic pre-market trading, U.S equity futures are trading higher. At last check, Dow futures are higher by about 100 points or 0.91% and the U.S. dollar trades lower near the $77.30 level. Earlier this morning, Oppenheimer upgraded Humana HUM to Outperform and Morgan Keegan upgraded Energy Transfer Partners ETP to Outperform as well. View all of today's upgrades here. JP Morgan downgraded Seagate Tech STX to Neutral and downgraded Xerox XRX to Underweight. View all of today's downgrades here. Overseas, European markets are higher in afternoon trading. Britain's FTSE 100 gained 0.54%, Germany's DAX added 1.45% and France's CAC 40 jumped 1.55% on the session. Asian stocks ended the session mixed. China's Shanghai jumped 3%, Japan's Nikkei 225 lost 0.4%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index added 1%. On the economic calendar, MBA Mortgage Applications came in at 1.3% versus a -4.3% prior reading. The minutes of the FOMC meeting will also be released at 2:00 p.m. On the commodity front, gold and silver futures are higher in pre-market trading, with gold trading up by about 1.4%. Energy futures are higher as well with crude oil up over 0.5% near the $86.30 level and gasoline futures are trading higher by about 0.5%. Natural Gas futures are flat this morning and copper futures are trading over 2% higher this morning. On the earnings front, Pepsico PEP reported Q3 EPS of $1.31 on revenues of $17.6 billion. The Street was looking for $1.30 per share on revenues of $17.2 billion. Yesterday, Alcoa AA reported Q3 EPS of $0.15 on revenues of $6.42 billion. The Street was looking for $0.22 per share on revenues of $6.24 billion. In corporate news, Chrysler Group FIATY and the UAW have reached a tentative agreement on a new national labor contract, covering approximately 26,000 represented employees. The agreement is subject to UAW member ratification. Pandora P announced today that Cadillac is the latest one of the company's twelve automotive partners. The NASDAQ OMX Group NDAQ announced today a share repurchase program, authorizing NASDAQ OMX to repurchase in the aggregate up to $300 million of its outstanding common stock. Benzinga's Morning Radar: Technical Levels for Futures and Forex

Name	Resistance-2	Resistance-1	Mid Pivot	Support-1	Support-2
E-Mini Dow	11425	11375	11334	11284	11243
E-Mini S&P500	1202	1196	1188	1182	1174
E-Mini Nasdaq100	2317	2303	2283	2269	2249
Gold	1700	1682	1669	1651	1637
Silver	33.25	32.69	32.02	31.46	30.79
Crude	87.93	86.55	85.26	83.88	82.59
Natural Gas	3.69	3.64	3.58	3.53	3.46
EUR/USD	1.3747	1.3692	1.3628	1.3574	1.3511
USD/JPY	76.81	76.72	76.66	76.56	76.50
USD/CHF	0.9173	0.9129	0.9076	0.9032	0.8978

This concludes your news summary for October 12, 2011. Want to receive the morning news summary to you inbox every morning? Click here to subscribe now.