U.S. stock futures on Wednesday pointed toward a second day of gains, with investors looking past glum results out of Walt Disney and a profit warning from Costco Wholesale. S&P 500 futures rose 4.1 points to 835.60 and Nasdaq 100 futures added 4.75 points to 1,212.50. Dow industrial futures rose 39 points. Solid results from Merck and Schering-Plough and an unexpected rise in pending home sales lifted stocks on Tuesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 141 points, the S&P 500 added 13 points and the Nasdaq Composite added 21 points. Wednesday's calendar features the ADP's estimate of payrolls for January, due at 8:15 a.m. Eastern, as well as services sentiment for January, due at 10 a.m. Despite the strength in equities, other assets pointed to diminishing risk appetite. The Japanese yen beat up on rivals on Wednesday, notably the Australian dollar but also the U.S. dollar. Australian opposition lawmakers opposed a stimulus package there. Oil futures held over $41 a barrel ahead of weekly energy inventories, and gold futures climbed back over the $900 an ounce mark. "The big risk to the highly interventionalist world we live in is that the market takes fright at the eventual sums needed to keep us from the edge of depression and we see a huge sell-off in government bond markets," said credit analysts from Deutsche Bank. "Even if this risk is small, the probabilities edge higher with every week of new fiscal and monetary promises." Wednesday's wave of company results features new Dow industrials component Kraft Foods conglomerate ITT and media giant Time Warne Time Warner rival Walt Disney fell 7% in Frankfurt after the company reported a 32% profit fall on lower DVD sales and a drop in advertising sales at its broadcast and cable television networks. Analysts at Citigroup said economic headwinds were overwhelming asset quality. Electronic Arts may rise after the company announced plans to cut 1,100 jobs. Costco Wholesale warned its fiscal second-quarter earnings would be substantially below analyst estimates and said it won't provide new estimates for the rest of the year. Alcatel-Lucent reported a $5 billion fourth-quarter loss as the French-American telecom equipment maker continued its ignominious trend of never being profitable. Still, the stock rose in Paris as operating profit was better than forecast. Panasonic warned of an annual loss of $4.2 billion and said it would cut 15,000 jobs. After the close, tech bellwether Cisco Systems is due to report quarterly results. Outside of earnings, Ticketmaster and Live Nation will be in the spotlight on a report in The Wall Street Journal that the ticketing firms are weighing a merger. Overseas, the Nikkei 225 climbed 2.7% in Tokyo, helped by automakers, and the FTSE 100 rose 1.2% in London, led by mining stocks.

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