Wall Street To Open On A Mixed Note

New York, NY (AHN) - Stocks on Wall Street are set for a mixed start on Thursday, on slightly better news from Wal-Mart Stores Inc offsetting reports from Intel issuing warning of sharp sales drop. The U.S. stock index futures turn green.

Wal-Mart Stores reported Thursday that its third quarter profit increased by 10 percent on rise in new and repeat shoppers at the No. 1 retail discount store.

Net income of the company gained to $3.14 billion, or 80 cents a share, in the three months ended Oct. 31, up from $2.86 billion, or 70 cents, recorded in the year earlier in the same period.

Quarterly revenue of the retailer also increased by 7 percent to $98.64 billion, more than market analysts on Wall Street had expected.

At 7:12 a.m. EDT in New York, S&P futures were trading lower by 2.00 points or 0.23 percent at 855.50 points, NASDAQ futures was moving down by 3.25 points or 0.28 percent at 1,160.25 points.

While Dow was trading lower at 38.00 points or 0.46 percent at 8,318.00 points at the same time in New York.

Oil futures continued its downward movement and but remained above $55-a-barrel mark on Thursday, trading at a 21-month low level.

Recently, a light, sweet barrel for December delivery was trading lower by $1.08 to $55.08 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

On Wednesday, the contract had plunged by as much as$3.17, or 5.3 percent, at $56.160 a barrel overnight trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Treasury news.

Intel (INTC) issued profit warning for the fourth quarter as it expects the revenue to drop by as much as 17 percent than it had previously anticipated on weaking demand across all the markets.

The Labor Department is expected to release report on initial unemployment benefit filings for last week at 8:30 a.m. ET in Washington.

Siemens AG posted a wider fourth quarter loss than expected on Thursday as it declined more than anticipated by the market analysts in the period led by expenses related to job cuts in some of its business segments.

The company's net loss was 2.42 billion ($3.02 billion), with a earnings per share of 2.85 euros in the fourth quarter, compared to the negative net income of 74 million euors, with EPS 0.17 euros.

Revenue of Europe's largest engineering company in the fourth quarter increased by 7 percent to 21.65 billion euros from 20.2 billion euros reported a year earlier in the same period.

In currency trading, the yen changed hands at 96.05 yen per U.S. dollar in Asia on Thursday, after it closed just over 97 yen late Wednesday in New York.