News Summary for July 26, 2011

This is your Benzinga news summary and traders' outlook for Tuesday, July 26, 2011, covering headlines from overnight and Tuesday's pre-market session. Today in domestic pre-market trading, U.S. equity futures are trading higher after strong earnings from several blue-chip companies. The U.S. dollar is trading over 0.5% lower as there is still no decision reached about the debt ceiling. Earlier this morning, Piper Jaffray upgraded Volterra Semi VLTR to Overweight and Deutsche Bank upgraded Navios Maritime NMM to Outperform. View all of today's upgrades here. Piper Jaffray downgraded Computer Programs CPSI to Neutral. Goldman Sachs downgraded HCA HCA to Neutral. View all of today's downgrades here. Goldman Sachs lowered Lender Processing Service's LPS price target to $21 from $22 and Bank of America lowered SunPower Corp's SPWRA price target to $14 from $15. View all other analyst ratings here. Overseas, European markets were lower this morning. Britain's FTSE 100 fell about 0.5% and France's CAC 40 slipped 0.9% on the session. Asian stocks were higher on the session as well. China's Shanghai Index rose 0.1%, Japan's Nikkei 225 added 0.5%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index jumped 1.3%. On the economic calendar, the Case/Shiller housing data is due at 9:00 a.m. Consumer confidence, the Richmond Fed Manufacturing Index, and new home sales are set to be reported at 10:00 a.m. On the commodity front, gold and silver futures are flat in pre-market trading, with gold near the $1611 per ounce level. Energy futures are slightly higher with crude oil up around 0.5%, and gasoline futures are trading near the 3.09 level; however, natural gas futures are down over 0.5%. Finally, cooper futures are higher by about 1%. On the earnings front, Ford F reported Q2 EPS of $0.65 on revenues of $35.5 billion; The Street was looking for $0.60 per share on revenues of $31.57 billion. 3M MMM reported Q2 EPS of $1.60 on revenues of $7.7 billion; The Street was looking for $1.60 per share on revenues of $7.6 billion. Hershey HSY reported Q2 EPS of $0.56 on revenues of $1.33 billion; The Street was looking for $0.54 per share on revenues of $1.27 billion. Yesterday, Netflix NFLX reported Q2 EPS of $1.26 on revenues of $788.6 million; The Street was looking for $1.11 per share on revenues of $790.49 million. Shares fell as much as 10% after-hours. In corporate news, Radioshack (NYSE RSH) announced it would drop T-Mobile and begin to offer Verizon Wireless VZ products on September 15. This concludes your news summary for July 26, 2011.