Morning Briefing: 10 Things You Should Know

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- U.S. stock futures were pointing lower Wednesday amid light trading volumes across the globe.

European stocks were trading to the downside while Asian shares ended the session mostly lower. Japan's Nikkei 225 index closed slightly down at 8,925.04.

The economic calendar in the U.S. Wednesday includes the consumer price index for July at 8:30 a.m. EDT, the Empire State Manufacturing survey for August at 8:30 a.m., industrial production and capacity utilization for July at 9:15 a.m., and the National Association of Home Builders housing market index for August at 10 a.m.

U.S. stocks on Tuesday finished mixed as a stronger-than-expected rebound in retail sales in July failed to fuel substantial buying.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up nearly 3 points, or 0.02%, at 13,172.

The S&P 500 dipped less than a point, finishing at 1404. The Nasdaq slipped more than 5 points, or 0.18%, to close at 3017.

Cisco(CSCO) is expected to report fiscal fourth-quarter results after Wednesday's closing bell and analysts are calling for the networking equipment giant and Dow component to post earnings of 45 cents a share on revenue of $11.6 billion.

TheStreet will be live-blogging Cisco's results Wednesday at 3:45 p.m. EDT.

Other companies reporting on Wednesday include Abercrombie & Fitch(ANF) , Agilent Technologies(A) , Applied Materials(AMAT) , Deere(DE) , Hot Topic(HOTT) , Limited Brands(LTD) , NetApp(NTAP) , Petsmart(PETM) , SINA Corp.(SINA) , Staples(SPLS) and Target(TGT) .