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

to Buy, Sterne Agee upgraded Dick's Sporting Goods

to Neutral, and JP Morgan upgraded Motorola Mobility

to Neutral. View all of

. JP Morgan downgraded Agrium

to Neutral and Morgan Stanley downgraded Digital River

to Underweight. View all of

. JP Morgan raised Perrigo Co's

price target to $88 from $82 and Bank of America lowered Tower Watson's

price objective to $67 from $70. View all other

. 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,

and

futures are higher in pre-market trading, with gold $5 off the $1800 an ounce level. Energy futures are higher as well with

near $87.75 per barrel and

futures trading higher by about 1.5%.

futures are trading lower by about 1% and

futures are trading about 0.75% higher this morning. Merkel and Sarkozy had a

in which they pushed for euro integration and had no plan for joint bonds. On the earnings front, Deere

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

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

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

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.