Stock Futures Indicate Higher Opening After Stable To Weak Tuesday; Earnings To Be Watched

U.S. stock futures indicate a higher opening to markets on Wednesday following a session of range-bound-to-weak trading on Tuesday, and, in the absence of significant data releases, company earnings could once again set the tone for the day.

Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 0.45 percent and those on the Standard & Poor's 500 Index were up 0.47 percent, while futures on the Nasdaq 100 Index were up 0.35 percent. On Tuesday, the Nasdaq and the Dow indexes closed nearly flat while the S&P 500 index fell by 0.3 percent.

“If you look at the valuation of stocks today compared to earnings and dividends and relative to historical averages, it’s not obvious that the stock market is overvalued, in fact a lot of models will tell you that it’s undervalued given how strong profits have been,” John Williams, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve, told a press gathering after the Asia Economic Policy Conference on Tuesday, according to MarketWatch.

On the earnings front, Wednesday brings announcements from media giant Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX); energy majors Duke Energy Corp. (NYSE:DUK), Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NYSE:CHK) and Devon Energy Corp. (NYSE:DVN); and, health care major Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM). All of these earnings announcements are scheduled for before markets open.

In Europe, markets were up across the board with the Stoxx Europe 600 index rising 0.54 percent while London’s FTSE 100 was up 0.06 percent. Germany's DAX-30 was up 0.36 percent and France's CAC-40 was trading up 0.78 percent.

And, in Asia, markets were mixed, as Japan’s Nikkei was up 0.79 percent while the Shanghai Composite index was down 0.82 percent. Other markets such as Australia’s S&P/ASX 200, South Korea’s Kospi and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng indexes were flat. India’s BSE Sensex was down 0.38 percent.