Stock futures point higher after spike in building permits

By Andrea Tse

U.S. stock futures were rising, pointing to a higher Wall Street open Thursday, after a reported jump in building permits for July, more hints of stimulus from China and solid quarterly results from Cisco.

Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average ($INDU) were up by 25 points at 13,160. S&P 500 ($INX) futures were up by 3.1 points at 1,407. Futures for the Nasdaq ($COMPX) 100 were rising by 7.5 points to 2,746.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said during an inspection tour of the eastern province of Zhejiang that there's still more room for monetary easing in China thanks to the cooling inflation in the country, according to state media, during an inspection tour of the eastern province of Zhejiang.

"We have the conditions and capabilities, and will be sure to fulfill this year's economic and social development targets," said Wen.

The Commerce Department said housing starts in July were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 746,000, which was 1.1% below the June estimate of 754,000. Building permits last month were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 812,000, which was 6.8% above the June rate of 760,000.

Economists on average had predicted that housing starts came in at an annual rate of 757,000 and that building permits came in at a 770,000 annual rate.

Simultaneously, the Labor Department said Thursday that initial jobless claims for the week ended Aug. 11 increased by 2,000 to 366,000 from the previous week's upwardly revised figure of 364,000. The four-week moving average was 363,750, a decrease of 5,500 from the previous week's average of 369,250.

Continuing claims for the week ended Aug. 4 fell 31,000 to 3.305 million.

Economist surveyed by Reuters on average were expecting initial jobless claims of 365,000 and continuing claims of 3.3 million.

The release of the general business conditions index of the Philadelphia Fed's Business Outlook Survey at 10 a.m. is expected to show an improvement to minus 5 in August from minus 12.9.

The major U.S. equity averages finished mixed in moribund trading Wednesday with volume once again running extremely light.

September crude oil futures were dipping by 9 cents at $94.24 a barrel and December gold futures were down 60 cents at $1,606 an ounce.

The benchmark 10-year Treasury was flat, with the yield at 1.82%. The greenback was up 0.16%, according to the dollar index.

The FTSE in London was sliding 0.2% and the DAX in Germany was flat.

The Hong Kong Hang Seng index finished down 0.45% and the Nikkei in Japan closed ahead by 1.88%.

On the corporate front, Wal-Mart Stores (WMT)  reported net income of $4.02 billion, or $1.19 a share for the quarter ended Jul. 31 versus $3.80 billion, or $1.09 a share, the prior year. Revenue excluding membership fees at Sam's Club increased 4.5% to $113.53 billion. Analysts, on average, had predicted earnings of $1.17 a share on revenue of $114.63 billion.

Sears Holdings (SHLD) reported that its loss narrowed in the second quarter thanks to cost cuts and leaner inventory levels.

Cisco (CSCO) is already giving the Dow a headstart on a positive session. The stock was jumping more than 4% in late trades Wednesday after the networker reported strong quarterly results and announced plans to boost its quarterly cash dividend by 75% to 14 cents a share from 8 cents.

NetApp (NTAP) was also a standout gainer after the bell, rising more than 5% after the storage and data management technology company beat Wall Street's expectations for its fiscal first quarter and gave a solid outlook.