Futures Rise on Chinese Comments about Europe

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Stock futures were moderately higher Tuesday following China’s comments that it stood ready to help Europe with its sovereign debt crisis, helping spur a rally in the euro.

As of 8:55 a.m. in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures rose 55 points, or 0.48%, to 11459, the S&P 500 futures were up 5.6 points to 1246.70 and the Nasdaq 100 futures rose 7 points to 2227.25.

In comments at a EU-China trade summit, China’s Vice Premier Wang Qishan said that the EU has “taken a number of steps to actively respond to the sovereign-debt crisis” and expects that the EU member nations' recent actions “will quickly produce results.”

The comments are a positive sign that China, the world’s largest single largest sovereign debt buyer, does not consider the EU to be a risky investment. Also a large, steady buyer in the market should help ease any short-term market turbulence.

The comments help offset a warning from credit rating company Moody’s, which warned that Portugal’s credit rating might be downgraded in the near-term.

The euro rose against nearly all of the major world currencies, including a gain of 0.3% against the dollar.

Here in the U.S., it will be another mostly-quiet session as most of Wall Street is on vacation for the holiday season.

Investors will get earnings results ConAgra (NYSE:CAG) before the bell and from Nike (NYSE:NKE) after the closing bell. There is no economic data scheduled for release today.

U.S. markets did get a big M&A deal on Tuesday, with Canada's TD Bank Group (NYSE:TD) announcing it would buy Chrysler Financial from private equity firm Cerberus for $6.3 billion in cash.

In commodities, oil was unchanged at $89.37 a barrel and gold rose 0.1% to $1,387.40 a troy ounce.

Company News

Shares of Adobe Systems (NASDAQ:ADBE) rallied nearly 8% in pre-market trading after posting better-than-expected profit and gave projected earnings well ahead of analysts' estimates. Adobe said it now expects earnings between 54 cents and 59 cents a share for the current quarter while analysts were looking for 51 cents.

Global Markets

The U.K.'s FTSE 100 rose 0.9% to 5945.33, France's CAC 40 was up 0.98% to 3923.33 and Germany's DAX rose 0.89% to 7081.12.

In Asia, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 closed up 1.5% to 10370.50, Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 1.57% to 22993.90 and China's Shanghai Composite rose 1.79% to 2904.11.