LONDON (MarketWatch) -- U.S. stock futures held steady Thursday ahead of a flood of earnings from financial giants Citigroup and Goldman Sachs and a host of economic releases including inflation and two key regional indexes. Indexes were little changed after mobile-phone giant Nokia (NOK 14.07, -1.32, -8.58%) (FI:NOK1V 10.30, +0.28, +2.79%) swung to a third-quarter loss and said it expects 2009 phone volumes to drop by an upwardly revised 7% across the mobile industry. The company had previously forecast a 10% decline. See full story. S&P 500 futures rose eight-tenths of a point to 1,088.50 while Nasdaq 100 futures slipped 0.25 point to 1,747.50. Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 10 points. The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Wednesday passed the 10,000 mark for the first time in over a year, helped by upbeat earnings from Intel and J.P. Morgan Chase. The Dow rose 144 points, the S&P 500 tacked on 18 points and the Nasdaq Composite climbed 32 points. Analysts have pointed to a wave of generally positive economic data, as well as stronger-than-forecast corporate profits for the gains in markets. "You've got a double whammy of economic data globally that's better than expected, plus the U.S. earnings reports beating expectations," said UBS Head of Institutional Sales George Kanaan. "Profit news has been supportive to the market," added strategists at MF Global, pointing to the technology sector in particular. Nokia posted a 559 million euro ($836 million) third-quarter loss following write-downs totaling 1.17 billion euros. Sales fell 20% to 9.81 billion euros. Excluding one-time items, the company would have earned 0.17 euros a share, topping consensus estimates. Nokia shares slipped more than 7% in Helsinki. Chip maker Xilinx (XLNX 24.00, +0.07, +0.29%) late Wednesday reported a 21% profit drop but predicted revenue for the current quarter will top Wall Street estimates and lifted its dividend by 14%. Still to come are releases from Citigroup (C 4.94, -0.06, -1.20%) , Goldman Sachs (GS 192.11, -0.17, -0.09%) , Harley-Davidson (HOG 26.25, +1.61, +6.53%) , and after the close, IBM (IBM 128.35, +1.33, +1.05%) and Google (GOOG 533.85, -1.47, -0.28%) . The economics docket is nearly as loaded: releases on U.S. consumer prices for September, New York- and Philadelphia-area regional surveys from the Fed in October, weekly jobless claims and weekly oil inventories all are due for release. There was activity on the mergers front as well, with Xstrata pulling out of a $98 billion merger proposal with Anglo American, a group of Tandberg shareholders rejecting Cisco's (CSCO 24.38, +0.49, +2.05%) $3 billion offer, and Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD 49.55, +2.00, +4.21%) reaching a deal to sell its Central Europe operations for up to $3 billion. Lazard (LAZ 91.57, +50.57, +123.34%) also will be in the spotlight on the death of chairman and chief executive Bruce Wasserstein, who only was admitted to the hospital over the weekend. Steven Golub will become interim chief executive. Asian stocks climbed on the Dow 10,000 mark, with the Nikkei 225 rising 1.8% in Tokyo. The pan-European Dow Jones Stoxx 600 added 0.7%, while the dollar rose vs. the Japanese yen. Oil futures traded above $75 a barrel, while gold futures and U.S. government bonds declined.

Source