A Peek Into The Market Before The Trading Starts

Pre-open movers US stock futures are lower this morning, as oil prices continued to surge. Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 46 points to 12,048 and S&P 500 stock futures fell 7.50 points to 1,298. Nasdaq 100 futures declined 14.50 points to 2,289. A Peek Into Global Markets Negative sentiment ruled the European markets today. While STOXX Europe 600 Index has dropped 0.71%, London's FTSE 100 Index moved down 0.47%. Most Asian markets ended lower, with Japan's Nikkei Stock Average dropping 1.19%, Australia's S&P/ASX 200 dropping 0.70% and China's Shanghai Composite gaining 0.56%. Broker Recommendation Citi Investment Research is upgrading shares of Duncan Energy Partners L.P. DEP to Buy and is raising its price target to $44 after Enterprise Products Partners L.P. EPD agreed to merge with Duncan. In a note to clients, Citi writes, "We are upgrading DEP To Buy/Medium Risk rating from Hold/High Risk rating and increasing target price to $44.00 from $31.00. Our new target price is derived based on 0.9545x of EPD's TP, risk weighted by 95% as we believe that the likelihood of closing of the transaction is high. Our medium risk rating is based on lower refinancing risk as well as lower likelihood of an equity issuance based on DEP's current liquidity." Shares of DEP gained $7.84 to close at $40.40, a gain of 24.08%. Breaking news

• Target Corp. TGT today reported net earnings of $1,035 million for the quarter ended January 29, 2011, compared with $936 million in the quarter ended January 30, 2010. To read the full news, click here.
• General Motors Company GM today announced its calendar year 2010 results marked by $4.7 billion of net income attributable to common stockholders for its first full year of operations. To read the full news, click here.
• Sears Holdings SHLD reports its Q4 adjusted EPS at $3.67, versus the consensus of $3.57. To read the full news, click here.
• Frontier Oil Corporation FTO today announced net income of $3.6 million, or $0.03 per diluted share, for the quarter ended December 31, 2010, compared to a net loss of $75.1 million, or $0.72 per share, for the quarter ended December 31, 2009. To read the full news, click here.

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