U.S. stock futures moved higher Thursday after Dow Chemical announced a deal to acquire Rohm & Haas at a large premium.

Dow Chemical Co. has agreed to buy specialty chemicals maker Rohm and Haas for US$78 a share, or about $15 billion, 74% more than Rohm & Haas’s closing share price Wednesday of US$44.83.

Dow said Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and the Kuwaiti Investment Authority are investing in the deal.

Here at home, there are no major economic releases from Statistics Canada today.

The Canadian dollar opened at US98.86¢, off 0.04 cent.

South of the border, U.S. retailers were reporting strong sales for June, helped by the stimulus checks sent to consumers this spring. Wal-Mart posted a 5.8% surge in sales at stores open at least a year — better than the 2% to 4% sales growth that the discounter had earlier expected.

Oil prices rose slightly overnight. The near-month light sweet crude contract was up 54¢ to US$136.59 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Overseas, Japan’s Nikkei stock average edged up 0.1%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was flat and the Shanghai composite index declined 1.5%.

In Europe, London’s FTSE 100 index was down 1.5% after the Bank of England held its policy interest rate steady at 5%.

The German DAX was off 0.6% and the Paris CAC-40 was down 1.1%.

On Wednesday, a late afternoon selloff dragged the Toronto Stock Exchange’s main index into an official correction, as it dropped almost 200 points.

The S&P/TSX composite index closed down 198.93 points, or 1.44%, at 13,610.84. Nine of the 10 TSX main groups posted losses.

The junior S&P/TSX Venture composite index fell 27.21 points, or 1.13%, to finish at 2,372.49.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 236.77 points, or 2.08%, to 11,147.44, while the S&P 500 tumbled 29.01 points, or 2.28%, to 1,244.69.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index fell 59.55 points, or 2.60%, to close at 2,234.89.