News Summary for August 10, 2011

This is your Benzinga news summary and traders' outlook for Wednesday, August 10, 2011, covering headlines from overnight and Wednesday's pre-market session. Today in domestic pre-market trading, U.S. equity futures are trading lower as traders take profits after a 400 point rally in the Dow yesterday. At last check, Dow futures are down about 80 points and the U.S. dollar trades lower near the $74.00 level. Earlier this morning, Citigroup upgraded OpenTable OPEN to Buy, Bank of America upgraded Sherwin-Williams SHW to Buy and upgraded Monsanto MON to Buy as well. View all of today's upgrades here. Wunderlich downgraded Walt Disney DIS to Hold and Bank of America downgraded Eastman Chemical EMN to Neutral. View all of today's downgrades here. Jefferies lowered Cree's CREE price target to $38 from $46 and Evercore Partners lowered Walt Disney's DIS price target to $44 from $50. View all other of today's analyst ratings here Overseas, European markets were higher in afternoon trading. Britain's FTSE 100 added 0.8% and France's CAC 40 rose 0.4% on the session. Asian stocks ended the session higher as well. China's Shanghai Index added 0.9%, Japan's Nikkei 225 increased 1.1%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index jumped 2.3%. On the economic calendar, MBA mortgage applications came in at 21.7% versus a 7.1% prior reading. Wholesale inventories are set to be reported at 10:00 a.m. and the monthly budget statement is due at 2:00 p.m. On the commodity front, gold and silver futures are positive in pre-market trading, with gold about 20 points off new all-time highs; currently at $1762.50 per ounce level. Energy futures are moving higher with crude oil near $82.50 per barrel and gasoline futures trading higher by over 2%. Natural Gas futures are trading slightly lower and copper futures are flat this morning. On the earnings front yesterday, Walt Disney DIS reported Q3 EPS of $0.78 on revenues of $10.68 billion; The Street was looking for $0.73 per share on revenues of $10.45 billion. In corporate news, Europeans biggest bank HSBC announced it would sell its U.S. credit card business to Capital One COF for about $32.7 billion. Also, Apple AAPL has been granted a preliminary injunction against Samsung to halt sales of the Android-based Galaxy Tab 10.1 in all of the European Union with the exception of the Netherlands. Finally, Lear Corporation LEA today announced that CFO Matt Simoncini will succeed Bob Rossiter, who will step down as CEO, president and a director of Lear on September 1, 2011 and remain in an advisory role until May 2012 to assist with the transition. This concludes your news summary for August 10, 2011.