Financial Breakfast: Morning News Summary for September 13, 2011

This is your Benzinga news summary and traders' outlook for Tuesday, September 13, 2011, covering headlines from overnight and Tuesday's pre-market session. Today in domestic pre-market trading, U.S equity futures are trading lower. At last check, Dow futures are slightly lower by about 55 points or (0.5%) and the U.S. dollar trades lower near the $77.57 level. Earlier this morning, Brean Murray upgraded MGM

to Buy and Citigroup upgraded Kansas City Southern

to Buy as well. View all of

. Morgan Stanley downgraded SolarWinds

to Underweight and Jefferies downgraded NetLogic

to Hold. View all of

. Goldman Sachs removed Lockheed Martin

from its Americas Sell List and Sterne Agee lowered United Technologies'

price target to $95 from $101. View all other

. Overseas, European markets are mixed in afternoon trading. Britain's FTSE 100 lost 0.6%, Germany's DAX added 0.2% and France's CAC 40 slid 1% on the session. Asian stocks ended the session mixed as well. China's Shanghai Index lost 1%, Japan's Nikkei 225 added 1%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index tumbled 4.2%. On the economic calendar, the NFIB Small Business Optimism Index came in at 88.1 versus an 88 estimate. The Import Price Index is set to be reported at 8:30 a.m., IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index is due at 10:00 a.m., and the monthly budget statement is to be reported at 2:00 p.m. On the commodity front,

and

futures are slightly higher in pre-market trading, with gold trading higher by about 0.15%. Energy futures are higher as well with

up over the $89.00 level and

futures are trading higher by about 0.4%.

futures are unchanged and

futures are trading slightly lower this morning. On the earnings front, Cracker Barrel

reported Q4 EPS of $1.00 on revenues of $612.9 million; The Street was looking for $0.96 per share on revenues of $623.4 million. The company also guided fiscal 2012 revenue at $2.55-$2.6 billion versus analyst estimates of $2.53 billion In corporate news, VIVUS , Inc.

today presented

in diabetics. This concludes your news summary for September 13, 2011. Want to receive the morning news summary to you inbox every morning? Click

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