Morning News Summary for May 12, 2011

A commodities sell-off has hit the U.S. markets as investors head to cash for a safe haven. Oil, gold and silver all took a pre-market hit as the dollar index is on the rise. Silver dropped over 7% at some points this morning versus yesterday's closing price.

Read more about the commodities sell-off at this Benzinga article.

U.S stock futures are pointing to a lower open with both Asian and European markets losing ground. The euro continues its slide as the Greek sovereign debt crisis is still in full swing.

Kohl's (NYSE: KSS) is up 3 percent before the bell as the company hit analyst's expectations and also raised its fiscal year outlook.

More on Kohl's earnings can be found here.

All eyes are on tech stocks today as industry giant Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) warned that their quarter was far worse than many had expected. Investors fear a sector-wide trickle-down effect from the technology bellwether.

China is still under pressure, with inflation not under control and fears of another increase in interest rates looming. Commercial banks also had their reserve requirement ratio raised another 50 basis points by China's central bank.

A handful of stocks report financial results today with Nordstrom (NYSE: JWN) headlining the bunch. Investors are expecting good performance from the retail giant after many of its peers beat same-store sales estimates for the April reporting period.

Finally, a large amount of economic data was released this morning around the 8:30am time period. Of note, jobless claims saw a decrease while the producer price index pointed higher.

See PPI data on Benzinga here.