Futures waver on JPMorgan miss

The banking giant reports disappointing results. Italian borrowing costs fall, lifting European markets. Wall Street awaits data on trade and consumer sentiment. Gold and oil fall.

U.S. stock futures were ticking slightly lower despite gains in European markets after dissapointing earnings results from banking giant JPMorgan Chase (JPM 0.00%).

Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average ($INDU +0.17%) were down 9 points at 12,404. Futures for the S&P 500 ($INX 0.00%) were down 1.7 points at 1,289. Futures for the Nasdaq ($COMPX 0.00%) were about rising 1 point at 2,379.

JPMorgan reported fourth quarter profit of $3.7 bililon, or 90 cents per share, shy of expected earnings of 91 cents according to Thomson Reuters. The miss deflated earlier optimism from action in Europe.

An Italian bond auction earlier helped set a positive tone in European equities. Italy sold 3 billion euros of bonds maturing in 2014 at a yield of 4.83%, down from 5.62% at a similar auction in the past.

This come on the heels of government debt sales in both Spain and Italy during the prior session in which borrowing costs also fell. Spain was able to sell twice the amount of bonds that it had planned to, indicating the investor demand of its sovereign debt remains robust. Bonds sales in Italy on the whole have been comparatively softer.

Germany's DAX was up 0.43% while London's FTSE was up 0.18%. Japan's Nikkei Average settled 1.36% higher and Hong Kong's Hang Seng was up 0.57%.

Also at 8:30 a.m., import prices likely fell 0.1% in December after rising 0.7% in November. In the same Labor Department report, export prices probably inched up 0.1%

Later, at 9:55 a.m., the University of Michigan is expected to report that its consumer sentiment index for January rose to 71.5 from 69.9 in the prior month.

February oil futures were down 18 cents to $98.92 a barrel. In other commodities, February gold futures were down $9.60 to $1638.10 an ounce.

The dollar index was up 0.17%. The benchmark 10-year Treasury was up 8/32, diluting the yield to 1.9%.