A Peek Into The Market Before The Trading Starts

Pre-open movers US stock futures are lower this morning, as investors are awaiting earnings from General Motors Co GM and weekly jobless claims data. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 70 points to 11,748.00 and S&P 500 index futures fell 8.60 points to 1,245.90. Nasdaq 100 futures dropped 14.00 points to 2,288.50. A Peek Into Global Markets European markets were mostly lower today. The STOXX Europe 600 Index declined 0.75%, London's FTSE 100 Index moved down 1.28%, French CAC 40 index fell 0.56% and German DAX 30 index dropped 0.25%. Asian markets ended mixed, with Japan's Nikkei Stock Average gaining 0.1952%, Australia's S&P/ASX 200 moving down 1.26% and China's Shanghai Composite rising 0.21%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index fell 0.4910% and India's Sensex dipped 1.38%. Broker Recommendation Analysts at Robert W. Baird downgraded Dendreon Corporation DNDN from "outperform" to "neutral." The target price for Dendreon has been lowered from $56 to $20. Dendreon shares dipped 61.89% to $13.66 in pre-market trading. Breaking news

• Cigna Corp CI reported a 39% rise in its second quarter profit. Cigna's quarterly profit surged to $408 million, or $1.50 per share, from $294 million, or $1.06 per share, in the year-ago period. To read the full news, click here.
• Costco Wholesale Corp COST reported a 10% rise in its July sales at stores open at least a year. To read the full news, click here.
• Kraft Foods Inc KFT reported a 4.2% rise in its second-quarter profit and raised its projections for the year. It also announced its plans to split the company into two units. To read the full news, click here.
• Amazon Web Services LLC, an Amazon.com company, AMZN, today announced new capabilities for customers designed to support the security, network management, dedicated connectivity, and identity management requirements of enterprises when deploying mission-critical applications in the cloud. To read the full news, click here.