News Summary for August 17, 2011

This is your Benzinga news summary and traders' outlook for Wednesday, August 17, 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 up about 40 points and the U.S. dollar trades lower near the $73.75 level. Earlier this morning, Bank of America upgraded Sara Lee SLE to Buy, Sterne Agee upgraded Dick's Sporting Goods DKS to Neutral, and JP Morgan upgraded Motorola Mobility MMI to Neutral. View all of today's upgrades here. JP Morgan downgraded Agrium AGU to Neutral and Morgan Stanley downgraded Digital River DRIV to Underweight. View all of today's downgrades here. JP Morgan raised Perrigo Co's PRGO price target to $88 from $82 and Bank of America lowered Tower Watson's TW price objective to $67 from $70. View all other of today's analyst ratings here. Overseas, European markets are mostly lower in afternoon trading. Britain's FTSE 100 down 0.5%, Germany's DAX slipped 0.3% and France's CAC 40 added 0.7% on the session. Asian stocks ended the session lower as well. China's Shanghai Index dropped 0.3%, Japan's Nikkei 225 lost 0.5%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index added 0.4%. On the economic calendar, the Producer Price Index for the period of July is due at 8:30 a.m. On the commodity front, gold and silver futures are higher in pre-market trading, with gold $5 off the $1800 an ounce level. Energy futures are higher as well with crude oil near $87.75 per barrel and gasoline futures trading higher by about 1.5%. Natural Gas futures are trading lower by about 1% and copper futures are trading about 0.75% higher this morning. Merkel and Sarkozy had a press conference yesterday in which they pushed for euro integration and had no plan for joint bonds. On the earnings front, Deere DE reported Q3 EPS of $1.69 on revenues of $8.37 billion; The Street was looking for $1.67 per share on revenues of $7.5 billion. The company announced full year EPS and revenue guidance in-line with previous targets. Target TGT reported Q2 EPS of $1.03 on revenues of $16.2 billion; The Street was looking for $0.97 per share on revenues of $16.17 billion. Staples SPLS reported Q2 EPS of $0.22 on revenues of $5.82 billion; The Street was looking for $0.20 per share on revenues of $5.65 billion. Abercrombie & Fitch ANF reported Q2 EPS of $0.35 on revenues of $916.8 million; The Street was looking for $0.29 per share on revenues of $880.1 million. In corporate news, Global brewer SABMiller takes its $10 billion bid for Australian brewer Foster's directly to its shareholders, after SABMiller failed to win over Foster's board. This concludes your news summary for August 17, 2011.