Stock futures climb on eBay, Qualcomm earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures rose on Thursday, pointing to a rebound from Wednesday's sell-off after EBAY (EBAY.NQ)posted solid earnings and QUALCOMM (QCOM.NQ)boosted its outlook.

Qualcomm Inc's profit beat estimates and the cellphone chip supplier boosted its full-year forecast, while eBay Inc's profit topped expectations, helped by a record performance at its PayPal unit and strong European sales.

"The fact that the earnings picture today is on balance, better than we've seen over the past couple of days, we are clearly going to focus on that," said Arthur Hogan, chief market analyst, Jefferies & Co in Boston.

Revenues at both companies topped estimates, which investors saw as a sign of growth amid flagging economic data.

"We've had a tug of war between soft economic data and better-than-expected earnings," added Hogan. "On the days the economic data stream is worse than soft, the market is less than constructive. On the days when earnings outpower the economic data stream, then the market gets constructive."

S&P 500 futures gained 12.9 points and were above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures jumped 105 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures advanced 20.75 points.

Weekly jobless claims are due at 8:30 a.m. EDT <1230 GMT>, and the Conference Board's leading indicators and existing home sales are both due at 10 a.m. EDT. <1400 GMT>

Initial claims are expected at 445,000 versus last week's 429,000. June existing home sales are expected at 5.18 million versus 5.66 million in May. Leading indicators are expected to fall 0.3 percent for June against a 0.4 percent gain in May.

Eli Lilly and Co reported better-than-expected earnings, helped by cost controls and strong sales of cancer drug Alimta and depression treatment Cymbalta.

Dow component Travelers Cos Inc , the largest publicly traded U.S. property-casualty insurer, said profit fell, hurt by rising catastrophe losses.

3M Co , Caterpillar Inc and AT&T Inc all reported earnings on Thursday.

Also coming are United Parcel Service Inc , Amazon.com Inc , and Microsoft Corp .

European shares rose Thursday, reversing earlier falls as banks gained ahead of the sector's stress tests results on Friday.

The yen neared a 7-1/2-month high and Asian stocks slid Thursday after U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the economy faced "unusually uncertain" prospects.

On Wednesday, stocks fell after Bernanke's comments.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

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