Stock futures were little changed on Tuesday with market attention on aluminum company Alcoa, which kicks off the quarterly earnings season.

Sprint Nextel Corp will be in focus after the wireless service provider's chief executive stepped down on Monday as the company lowered its annual outlook, bowing to investor pressure amid heavy customer losses.

Shares of the company rose nearly 3 percent in extended trading on Monday.

Minutes of the Federal Reserve's policy meeting on September 18 are also due to be released and investors are looking for signs for further cuts in interest rates.

At that meeting, the Fed decided to cut interest rates by 50 basis points. Data last week showed the U.S. economy added more jobs in September than economists had expected.

By 5:50 a.m. EDT, S&P futures, Dow futures and Nasdaq futures were all up between 0.05 and 0.1 percent.

Credit markets are operating at about 60 percent of normal, so rate cuts are needed in the short term, said Mark Bon, a London-based fund manager at Canada Life.

The economy is not as weak as we thought a couple of weeks ago, but the economic impact of malfunctioning credit markets would be bad, he said.

On Monday, the Dow industrials and the S&P 500 dipped in light trading volume as investors locked in profits from Friday's record-setting rally and two brokers downgraded Merrill Lynch & Co, citing its exposure to credit market turmoil.

Alcoa is the first Dow component to unveil results, which are due after market hours. Other companies reporting in the week include Costco Wholesale Corp, Monsanto Co, Pepsico Inc and Safeway Inc.

Yum Brands Inc will also be watched after the restaurant operator reported a higher-than-expected 17 percent rise in quarterly earnings on strong China results and boosted its full-year outlook on Monday.

Its shares rose more than 3 percent in extended trading.

(Additional reporting by Sitaraman Shankar)

Investment U.S.