US Stock Futures Suggest Upbeat Start After Wednesday's Stumble; Big-Ticket Earnings Announcements To Influence Session

Yet another day with a packed calendar of quarterly earnings, along with economic data, should influence investors even as futures suggest an upbeat open to the session following Wednesday's trend reversal.

Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 0.19 percent while futures on the S&P 500 were up 0.35 percent and those on the Nasdaq were up 1.2 percent. On Tuesday, the Dow slipped 0.08 percent and the S&P 500 fell 0.22 percent while the Nasdaq lost 0.83 percent.

3M Co (NYSE:MMM), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), American Airlines Group Inc (NASDAQ:AAL), Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE:CAT), Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc (NYSE:CCE), Eli Lilly and Co (NYSE:LLY), General Motors Company (NYSE:GM), JetBlue Airways Corporation (NASDAQ:JBLU), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), Southwest Airlines Co (NYSE:LUV), United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE:UPS), Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) and Visa Inc (NYSE:V) are among those scheduled to announce earnings on Thursday. On the data front, numbers on durable goods orders for March and jobless claims for the week ended April 19 are both due at 8:30 a.m. EDT.

In Europe, markets were positive with the Stoxx Europe 600 index up 0.68 percent while the FTSE 100 was up 0.62 percent. Germany’s DAX-30 rose 0.72 percent while France's CAC-40 was up 0.89 percent.

In Asia, Japan's Nikkei-225 ended the day down 0.97 percent while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.24 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 0.24 percent while the Shanghai Composite fell 0.5 percent. South Korea’s Kospi slipped 0.1 percent.