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

to Overweight and Deutsche Bank upgraded Navios Maritime

to Outperform. View all of

. Piper Jaffray downgraded Computer Programs

to Neutral. Goldman Sachs downgraded HCA

to Neutral. View all of

. Goldman Sachs lowered Lender Processing Service's

price target to $21 from $22 and Bank of America lowered SunPower Corp's

price target to $14 from $15. View all other

. 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,

and

futures are flat in pre-market trading, with gold near the $1611 per ounce level. Energy futures are slightly higher with

up around 0.5%, and

futures are trading near the 3.09 level; however,

futures are down over 0.5%. Finally,

futures are higher by about 1%. On the earnings front, Ford

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

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

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

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

products on September 15. This concludes your news summary for July 26, 2011.