With the two day Federal Reserve meeting in the rearview mirror this morning markets are remain flat in the pre-market albeit the DOW and S&P 500 are tilted to the down side. 

Market participants seem to continue to weigh the Federal Reserve statement with no clear time period to the start of its tapering of its $85 billion bond buying program.

Overnight the Bank of Japan (BOJ) published its statement from its meeting which includes its semiannual outlook statement in which the BOJ is targeting a 1.9% increase in core consumer prices in April 2015 – Japan’s fiscal year.

Facebook (FB, quote) is a name to watch this morning after beating earnings expectations by 6 cents per share the frenzy was short lived when management cast uncertainty over Facebook’s future earnings during the analysts call yesterday.

After listening to the call several concerns stood out but most worrisome is Facebook is likely be unable additional ads into its user’s newsfeed stream.  Management did go in to say they will look into improving the quality of the ads to help increase the ad prices.

On the whole the retail sector is one to watch not only are there concerns about the American shopper this holiday season with the added pressure from the government shutdown and next deadline in congress right in the heart of the holiday season. Target (TGT, quote) and Walmart (WMT, quote) both lowered their sales forecasts for the 4^th quarter not only on the aforementioned concerns but also on the huge concerns of $16 billion in food stamps being removed from the market.

In November the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service, will reduce the amount per house hold as the 2009 benefit increase is due to expire.  The increase was put in place as a temporary aid during the recession.  A family of roughly receives $272 in assistance will find $36 less in food stamps on November.

On the international front Asian markets dropped following the U.S. session with the Shenzhen composite dropping by 1.18% and the NIKKEI dropping 1.20%

Some key companies reporting earnings today to watch are: