News Summary for August 4, 2011

This is your Benzinga news summary and traders' outlook for Thursday, August 4, 2011, covering headlines from overnight and Thursday's pre-market session. Today in domestic pre-market trading, U.S. equity futures are set for a weak morning as traders wait for the jobless claims data. At last check, Dow futures are down about 60 points and the U.S. dollar trades higher near the $75 level. Earlier this morning, Miller Tabak upgraded Talbots TLB to Neutral, Piper Jaffray upgraded McDonald's MCD to Overweight, and Goldman Sachs upgraded Tiffany's TIF to Neutral. View all of today's upgrades here. Piper Jaffray downgraded Allergan AGN to Neutral and JP Morgan downgraded Entropic Communications ENTR to Neutral. View all of today's downgrades here. JP Morgan lowered MEMC Electronic's WFR price target to $7.25 from $9 and Deutsche Bank lowered Leap Wireless' LEAP price target to $13 from $18. View all other analyst ratings here. Overseas, European markets were mixed this morning. Britain's FTSE 100 fell 0.8% and France's CAC 40 added 0.1% on the session. Asian stocks ended the mixed lower as well. China's Shanghai Index added 0.2%, Japan's Nikkei 225 gained 0.2%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index slid 0.5%. Also, the Bank of Japan took action to slow down the rise of the yen by easing monetary policy and selling one trillion yen, which equates to $12.6 billion. The USD/JPY currency pair is trading over 3% higher. On the economic calendar, initial and continuing claims are set to be reported at 8:30 a.m. On the commodity front, gold and silver futures are flat in pre-market trading, with gold near the $1670 per ounce level. Energy futures are lower with crude oil down about $1 at $91.12 per barrel and gasoline futures trading lower by about 1%. Natural gas futures are trading flat this morning and copper futures are lower by 0.5% this morning. On the earnings front, Kraft KFT reported Q2 EPS of $0.62 on revenues of $13.88 billion; The Street was looking for $0.58 per share on revenues of $13.15 billion. General Motors GM reported Q2 EPS of $1.54 on revenues of $39.4 billion; The Street was looking for $1.20 per share on revenues of $36.71 billion. DirecTV DTV reported Q2 EPS of $0.91 on revenues of $6.6 billion; The Street was looking for $0.85 per share on revenues of $6.54 billion. In corporate news, Kraft Foods KFT announced that its Board of Directors intends to create two independent public companies: A high-growth global snacks business and a high-margin North American grocery business. This concludes your news summary for August 4, 2011.