Stock Futures Bounce Back After Selloff

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U.S. stock-index futures rallied on Tuesday on the heels of Wall Street's worst selloff of the year as traders responded to several upbeat corporate reports and mostly strong data.

Today's Markets

As of 8:40 a.m. ET, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures rallied 140 points to 14652, S&P 500 futures jumped 15 points to 1559 and Nasdaq 100 futures climbed 27 points to 2811.

The markets took a thrashing on Monday, with the Dow and S&P 500 taking their worst falls since last November. The tech-heavy Nasdaq stumbled the most since June. The move was driven by a confluence of factors, from weak data in China, to a collapse in the commodities complex, to news of the bombings in Boston.

The markets were poised to open higher on the day, as traders took advantage of the beaten-down stock prices. Meanwhile, gold futures climbed $26.80, or 2%, to $1,388 a troy ounce following the biggest selloff in a percent basis in three decades. The benchmark U.S. crude oil contract was essentially flat at $88.66 a barrel after plummeting 2.8% in the last session.

The docket of corporate and economic events was full on the day.

Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) unveiled adjusted first-quarter profits of 46 cents a share, topping estimates by a penny. Sales of $11.03 billion also beat expectations of $10.94 billion. Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) posted diluted, first-quarter earnings of $4.29 a share, compared to $3.92 in the same period in 2012. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the figure was comparable to estimates of $3.88 a share. Revenues of $10.09 billion topped expectations of $9.72 billion.

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) posted adjusted first-quarter earnings of $1.44 a share on revenues of $17.5 billion, topping expectations of $1.40 a share on $17.42 billion.

Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) report after the close in New York.

The Commerce Department said housing starts jumped 7% in March from February to an annualized 1.03 million-unit rate, easily beating expectations of 930,000. Permits dropped 3.9% for the month to an annualized rate of 902,000 units, falling short of forecasts of 940,000 units.

Meanwhile, a report from the Labor Department showed inflation at the consumer level fell 0.2% in March from February, compared to expectations of no change. Excluding the food and energy components,  prices were up 0.1%, a slightly shallower rise than the 0.2% increase economists forecast. The headline reading climbed 1.5% from the year prior in the smallest year-to-year increase since July 2012.

Later, at 9:15 a.m. ET, the Fed provides its snapshot of industrial production for March. The gauge of the U.S. factory sector is expected to have edged up 0.2% on a month-to-month basis.

Foreign Markets

The Euro Stoxx 50 fell 0.49% to 2612, the English FTSE 100 dipped 0.46% to 6314 and the German DAX slumped 0.37% to 7685.

In Asia, the Japanese Nikkei 225 slipped 0.41% to 13221 and the Chinese Hang Seng edged lower by 0.46% to 21672.