NEW YORK - U.S. stock futures are recovering from their lows Tuesday after billionaire investor Warren Buffett agreed to buy the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad and Viacom posted strong earnings growth for the third quarter.

Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway is paying $100 a share for Burlington Northern in a deal valuing the railroad at $34 billion. Burlington Northern shares shot up nearly 30 percent in premarket trading.

Stock futures also got a lift as Viacom Inc. posted a 15 percent jump in its third-quarter earnings as solid profits in its movie business helped offset continuing declines in advertising and DVD sales.

In other corporate news, health care products maker Johnson & Johnson announced plans to cut up to 7 percent of its global work force and streamline its business structure to save up to $900 million next year.

Stock futures had been much lower earlier Tuesday, following steep losses in Europe and Asia. European shares fell amid worries about the stability of major financial firms, while stocks in Asia fell overnight, finding little relief in upbeat manufacturing data from the previous day that helped lift U.S. markets.

Ahead of the market's open, Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 41, or 0.4 percent, to 9,694. Standard & Poor's 500 index futures fell 4.40, or 0.4 percent, to 1,034.70, and Nasdaq 100 index futures fell 7.75, or 0.5 percent, to 1,661.25.

Investors around the globe have been jittery in recent weeks, wary of whether the economic recovery can maintain the same pace once government stimulus measures are removed. That uncertainty has led to wild swings in the market. The Dow Jones industrial average has risen or fallen more than 100 points in six of the last eight trading days.

Analysts expect trading to be choppy throughout the week, as the market readies for a frenzy of economic reports, which culminates Friday with the government's employment report for October.

On Tuesday, investors will get data on factory orders, as well as sales reports from major automakers. Analysts are expecting factory orders to have risen 0.8 percent in September, after falling by that amount the month before. The Commerce Department is scheduled to release the report at 10 a.m. Eastern time.

But even if the reports are positive, trading could be volatile. Stocks vacillated between gains and losses Monday after a stronger-than-expected reading on manufacturing activity and a surprise profit from Ford Motor Co. All the major indexes ended up with gains of less than 1 percent.

Also Tuesday, the Federal Reserve begins a two-day policy meeting on interest rates. Though the central bank isn't expected to take any action on interest rates just yet, investors will be watching for what the Fed has to say about the state of the economy when it issues a statement Wednesday at the conclusion of the meeting. The Fed's benchmark interest rate currently stands at a record low of near zero.

In Europe, investors were unnerved by further efforts to restructure two of the U.K.'s largest banks. Lloyds said it was looking to raise about $34 billion through a share issuance, while the Royal Bank of Scotland got a $41 billion infusion from the government.

Adding to the market's worries, Swiss bank UBS AG reported a third-quarter loss of about $542 million, due to hefty accounting charges.

Britain's FTSE 100 tumbled 2.1 percent, Germany's DAX index fell 1.9 percent, and France's CAC-40 dropped 2.3 percent. Earlier Tuesday, Hong Kong's Hang Seng index fell 1.8 percent. Markets in Japan were closed for a holiday.

The outlook for financial firms is anything but clear. Analysts continue to warn that banks face more heavy losses on loans in the coming quarters. On Monday, financial stocks briefly pulled the market lower after Jon D. Greenlee, the Federal Reserve's associate director for banking supervision and regulation, told lawmakers that "significant stress and weaknesses" remain in the financial system.

Bond prices rose in early trading Tuesday. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, slipped to 3.41 percent from 3.42 percent late Monday.

In other trading, the dollar rose against other major currencies.

Gold prices added about $9 to $1,063, while light, sweet crude fell 80 cents to $77.33 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

A service of YellowBrix, Inc.