Weekend Reading: Watch for Consolidation Paul Kedrosky 04/20/08 - 02:32 PM EDT
Welcome to another edition of Weekend Reading. First, let's take a brief look back at the week that just ended and a look forward to the week ahead before getting to a summary of articles and papers worth reading this weekend. It was a gangbuster week on the major U.S. markets, the best in some time. Some of the worrying about financial stocks faded, while several key earnings results came in better than expected, and economics indicators were no worse than predicted. Of course, it didn't hurt that Google GOOG beat the numbers -- and the bears - with its results after market close Thursday. The upshot: the Dow and the S&P 500 came in up 4.2% and 4.3% respectively, while the Nasdaq ended the week up 4.9%.
Looking forward to next week, there are plenty of crosscurrents, including a growing tide of layoffs in the financial services industry. Earnings probably will continue to remain tepid but far from awful, and so I would look for things to consolidate somewhat. There is enough bad news -- higher oil prices, troubles at UBS UBS and Royal Bank of Scotland RBS, etc. -- that I'm hard-pressed to see how we extend the run markedly higher over the next week.
Turning to economic indicators, next week will be highlighted by U.S. data on both new-and existing-home sales, which will almost certainly be crummy.
Turning to earnings, highlights next week will include Yahoo! YHOO, VMware VMW, McDonald's MCD, DuPont DD and Black & Decker BDK, among many others.
And finally, here are some articles and papers worth reading:
Editor's note: To access some of these stories, registration or a subscription may be required. Please check the individual links for the site's policy.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
