Wall Street looked set to open narrowly mixed on Tuesday, amid a slew of Dow component earnings reports and ahead of major central bank meetings.
Dow Jones industrial average futures indicated a lower open, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures indicating a mildly higher open as of 8:34 a.m. ET.
The day is a very busy one for second-quarter earnings news, with reports from Dow components 3M, Caterpillar, DuPont, McDonald's, United Technologies and Verizon Communications.
3M posted earnings that beat by one cent a share, on revenue a touch below estimates. The firm lowered its guidance for 2016 sales growth.
Caterpillar reported earnings that beat on both the top and bottom line.
DuPont posted earnings that beat on both the top and bottom line, and raised its full-year forecast. Shares were more than 1 percent higher in pre-market trade.
McDonald's fell more than 3 percent in pre-market trade after reporting a lower-than-expected rise in U.S. same-store sales. Quarterly earnings, ex-items, did beat expectations.
United Technologies raised full-year guidance and posted quarterly earnings that beat on both the top and bottom line.
Verizon reported quarterly earnings that topped expectations on revenue that missed. The telecommunications giant said a seven-week workers' strike hurt results.
Twitter and Apple (another Dow-listed stock) are then expected to report numbers after Wall Street trade ends.
UBS warned in a report on Tuesday that Apple was "fragile" due to its dependence on iPhone and China. The bank rates the stock a "buy," however, with a 12-month price target of $115. The company is expected to report quarterly earnings of $1.38 per share on $42.11 billion in revenue, according to analysts polled by Reuters.
Earlier on Tuesday, oil major BP announced second-quarter profit of $720 million on an underlying replacement cost basis, down from $1.3 billion in the second-quarter of 2015.
BP said it had "drawn a line under the material liabilities for Deepwater Horizon," which has cost the company $61.6 billion. New York-listed shares fell 1.8 percent in extended-hours trading.
European energy stocks were generally lower in early trade on Tuesday, amid a decline in oil prices in recent days.
U.S. light crude futures for September traded more than 1 percent lower near $42.50 a barrel early Tuesday morning ET.
Fed meets
The U.S. Federal Reserve Open Market Committee will start its two-day monetary policy meeting on Tuesday. Analysts expect the central bank to hold off on an interest rate hike this month — and possibly for months to come.
Manulife Asset Management's Geoff Lewis told CNBC on Tuesday the Fed could postpone raising rates until the first half of 2017, due to uncertainty around the Brexit vote and the upcoming U.S. presidential election.
The Bank of Japan is also scheduled to meet later in the week.
The Dow and the indexes closed slightly lower on Monday, with the Nasdaq roughly flat.
Wall Street close
Major U.S. Indexes
—CNBC's Arjun Kharpal, Harriet Taylor and Josh Lipton contributed to this report.
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CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect that McDonald's earned $1.45 a share in the latest quarter, on an adjusted basis, which topped analyst expectations.