Wall Street points to tiny gains ahead of the open on mixed corporate earnings results

Wall Street logged tiny gains before the bell Thursday with markets relying heavily on corporate earnings data for insight into how the U.S. economy is doing in the absence of government data due to the shutdown.

Futures for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq were up 0.2% ahead of the market's open, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average inched up 0.1%.