U.S. stock futures on Thursday pointed to a stronger start, with traders looking past Hewlett-Packard's downbeat guidance after the lumps that the market has taken earlier in the week.
S&P 500 futures rose 9.1 points to 788.60 and Nasdaq 100 futures rose 8 points to 1,188.00. Dow industrial futures rose 61 points.
Other asset classes showed signs of greater risk taking. The euro recovered some of this week's losses on fears over Eastern Europe contagion, and oil futures rose over $1 a barrel.
U.S. stocks closed basically flat on Wednesday, following the rout on Tuesday, as strength for defensive stocks helped compensate for losses from financials as a foreclosure mitigation plan by the Obama administration was announced. The Dow industrials rose 3 points, the S&P 500 fell to its lowest finish since Nov. 12 with a fractional point decline, and the Nasdaq Composite slipped 2 points.
"The homeowner bailout announced (Wednesday), adding flesh to the bare bonds of the financial sector package outline from last week, is big enough to make a material difference to the foreclosure rate," said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics.
"That in turn would bring about a floor in home prices sooner than would otherwise have been the case. But you should be under no illusions about the ability of the plan to lift home prices: it can't, because the inventory overhang is so huge."
The economic docket for Thursday will include manufacturing data from the Philadelphia area, with markets on edge to see if that reading is as weak as a similar reading from the New York area earlier this week.
Weekly jobless claims, producer price data from January and leading indicators data also will be released.
Of stocks in the spotlight, Hewlett-Packard dropped 3% after it reported a 13% fall in fiscal first-quarter profit and disappointed Wall Street with its current quarter earnings estimate.
"Due to severe pressure on organic growth and unsustainable recent margin performance, we expect investors to increasingly question HP's medium-term EPS power," said analysts from Deutsche Bank.
LDK Solar fell 6% after cutting its fourth-quarter revenue forecast.
Whole Foods Market jumped 16% as the supermarket chain's better-than-forecast profit, as well as annual outlook, beat expectations.
Sprint Nextel rose 3% as it narrowed its quarterly loss to $1.6 billion from $29.3 billion and said it's done writing off goodwill from the Nextel deal.
UBS climbed in Swiss trade as the $780 million settlement with the Department of Justice wasn't as steep as feared.
Most Asian markets ended higher Thursday, with exporters such as Toyota Motor Corp. lifting Japanese stocks and miners spurring gains in Australia after a three-session losing streak.
Japan's Nikkei 225 ended up 0.3% at 7,557.65 and the Shanghai Composite added 0.8%.
European stocks traded steady, with well-received results from Nestle and Reed Elsevier balanced by losses for drugmakers like Shire
