A Peek Into The Market Before The Trading Starts

Pre-open movers US stock futures are lower this morning, as investors are awaiting earnings from General Motors Co (NYSE: GM) and weekly jobless claims data. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 70 points to 11,748.00 and S&P 500 index futures fell 8.60 points to 1,245.90. Nasdaq 100 futures dropped 14.00 points to 2,288.50. A Peek Into Global Markets European markets were mostly lower today. The STOXX Europe 600 Index declined 0.75%, London's FTSE 100 Index moved down 1.28%, French CAC 40 index fell 0.56% and German DAX 30 index dropped 0.25%.

Asian markets ended mixed, with Japan's Nikkei Stock Average gaining 0.1952%, Australia's S&P/ASX 200 moving down 1.26% and China's Shanghai Composite rising 0.21%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index fell 0.4910% and India's Sensex dipped 1.38%. Broker Recommendation Analysts at Robert W. Baird downgraded Dendreon Corporation (NASDAQ: DNDN) from "outperform" to "neutral." The target price for Dendreon has been lowered from $56 to $20.

Dendreon shares dipped 61.89% to $13.66 in pre-market trading.

Breaking news

• Cigna Corp (NYSE: CI) reported a 39% rise in its second quarter profit. Cigna's quarterly profit surged to $408 million, or $1.50 per share, from $294 million, or $1.06 per share, in the year-ago period. To read the full news, click here.
• Costco Wholesale Corp (NASDAQ: COST) reported a 10% rise in its July sales at stores open at least a year. To read the full news, click here.
• Kraft Foods Inc (NYSE: KFT) reported a 4.2% rise in its second-quarter profit and raised its projections for the year. It also announced its plans to split the company into two units. To read the full news, click here.
• Amazon Web Services LLC, an Amazon.com company, (NASDAQ: AMZN), today announced new capabilities for customers designed to support the security, network management, dedicated connectivity, and identity management requirements of enterprises when deploying mission-critical applications in the cloud. To read the full news, click here.