Stocks ready to pull back

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Stocks were headed for a lower open Thursday amid caution about earnings and the economy and what retailers would report for their post-holiday sales period.

At 7:52 a.m. ET, Nasdaq and S&P futures were down.

Oil edged higher after being slightly down in earlier trading. U.S. light crude rose 1 cent to $57.72 a barrel in electronic trading.

Treasury prices were lower, raising the 10-year note yield to 4.75 percent from 4.74 percent late Wednesday. The dollar was stronger against the euro and the yen in early trading.

Overseas, stocks in Asia closed down Thursday, while major indexes in Europe were lower in early trading.

Major U.S. retailers were due to report January sakes. Analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call forecast that sales at stores open at least a year, a closely watched retail measure known as same-store sales, rose 3.1 percent, which would be far below the 4.9 percent gain in January 2006.

No. 1 retailer Wal-Mart Stores (Charts) reported that its same-store sales gained 2.2 percent, which was better than originally expected.

Early Thursday wholesale club retailer Costco (Charts) reported that its same store sales gained 2 percent in January, far less than the 9 percent gain a year earlier and short of the 3 percent forecast from First Call.

Jason Leander, vice president at Rothschild Investment Corp., said he'll be watching the same-store sales results, but he hasn't seen retail stocks doing much to affect the broader market recently.

He said that after a strong outlook at Cisco Sytems helped lift tech stocks Wednesday, he's not sure there's a lot of news out there to help the bulls the rest of the week.

"I don't think the rest of the week will be much to sneeze at," he said. "I think we've had most of the win for this week came already with Cisco."

Shares of media conglomerate Walt Disney (Charts) gained 2 percent in after-hours trading Wednesday after it reported solid gains in sales and profits for the latest quarter, driven by healthy sales of "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Cars" DVDs as well as strong results at its ESPN and ABC networks.

But shares of HSBC (Charts) lost 2 percent in London trading after the bank reported a $10.5 billion charge for bad debts, which was 20 percent above analysts' forecasts, due to problems in its U.S. mortgage portfolio.

In another sign of weakness in the U.S. housing market, luxury home builder Toll Brothers (Charts) reported a 19 percent drop in preliminary fiscal first quarter revenue, driven by a nearly 30 percent cancellation rate. But the company said that the pace of cancelled orders had improved from the fourth quarter when it saw a 37 percent cancellation rate.

Two of the founders of video sharing Web site YouTube's stand to divide shares of Google (Charts) stock now valued at around $650 million, the Web search leader said in a regulatory filing that detailed its $1.65 billion purchase of the site.

Eastman Kodak (Charts) CEO Antonio Perez said the company is on track to complete its four-year transformation into a digital-imaging company by this fall. He made his comments ahead of the company's annual meeting Thursday.

GlaxoSmithKline (Charts) won FDA approval late Wednesday for the first over-the-counter weight-loss pill. Butshares of the drugmaker slipped 0.8 percent in London trading early Thursday.

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