MORNING COFFEE

Cell Phone Companies Take On Credit Card Companies. AT&T (T), T-Mobile (DTEGY) and Verizon Wireless (VZ) are going after Visa (V) and MasterCard (MA), in a venture to have consumers use their smartphones to make purchases instead of credit and debit cards.  Reports say the venture may works with Discover Financial Services (DFS) and Barclays (BCS) to test out a system in four U.S. cities. 

Blackberry Phones To Be Blocked. Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have plans to block Research In Motion (RIMM) services, including email and web browsing. The reasoning for the block is supposedly for security, since Blackberry’s data is encrypted and can’t be monitored for illegal activity.  India has also recently suggested a ban on BlackBerry may be coming.

Downgrades

Texas Instruments (TXN): Robert W. Baird lowered their rating from Outperform to Neutral and lowered their target price from $34.00 to $28.00.

Micron (MU): Robert W. Baird lowered their rating from Outperform to Neutral and lowered their target price from $18.00 to $8.00.

Coverage Initiated

News Corp (NWSA): Collins Stewart initiated coverage with a Buy rating and target price of $18.00.

Coverage Reiterated/Price Target Changed

Walt Disney (DIS): Wunderlich reiterated their Hold rating and raised their target price from $24.00 to $36.00.

General Dynamics (GD): Oppenheimer reiterated their Outperform rating and lowered their target price from $88.00 to $80.00.

Earning Reports

Humana (HUM): Reported Q2 EPS of $2 beating estimates by+$0.33 on revenue of $8.65 billion.

Loews Corp (L): Reported Q2 EPS of beating estimates by+$0.87.

·         Futures: Dow +1.0%. S&P +1.1%. Nasdaq +1.0%. Crude +1.2% to $79.88. Gold -0.3% to $1180.20.

·         Asia: Japan +0.3% to 9570. Hong Kong +1.8% to 21413. China +1.3% to 2673. India +1.2% to 18081.

·         Europe: London +2.0%. Paris +2.0%. Frankfurt +1.6%.