Wall Street faces another week of earnings season

Wall Street faces another week of earnings reports on the upbeat after a wave of bright corporate news dissipated some of the gloom from the ongoing financial turmoil.
"A sense that the worst may be over on the credit crisis front is gradually rolling over the market, with equities cheering generally better-than-expected results for non-financials this week, and looking beyond further write-downs among major US banks," said Douglas Porter, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets.
During the week, solid quarterly results from multinationals such as Google, IBM, Intel, Coca-Cola, Caterpillar and Honeywell, have eased concerns about bottom lines in the credit squeeze.
Two of the biggest US banks exposed to the subprime mortgage crisis - Merrill Lynch and Citigroup - announced quarterly losses sharply lower than their losses in the prior quarter.
"What a difference a week makes," Briefing.com's Patrick O'Hare said. "Last Friday the market was bemoaning a very disappointing earnings report from General Electric and fearing the worst in front of this week's busy earnings reporting period.
"This Friday it exits the week in an upbeat mood, basking in a sense of relief that this week's earnings reports and economic data were better than feared." In the week to Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 4.25 percent to 12,849.36 while the Standard & Poor's 500 broad-market index climbed 4.31 percent to 1,390.33.
The tech-dominated Nasdaq composite advanced 4.92 percent to 2,402.97.
Markets will have a new barrage of earnings reports to digest next week.
Bank of America, Merck and Halliburton kick off the week Monday, followed Tuesday by a series of major players in a variety of sectors: AT&T, Omnicon, Yahoo, Lockheed Martin and McDonald's.
The rest of the week features Apple, Boeing, Amazon, UPS, Motorola, Microsoft, ExxonMobil, Ford, Pepsico, American Express and Northrop Grumman. Bonds weakened as investors looked to equities. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond rose to 3.743 percent Friday from 3.471 percent a week earlier, and that on the 30-year bond climbed to 4.517 percent from 4.302 percent. Bond yields and prices move in opposite directions.
Key economic indicators next week include March new and existing home sales, continuing jobless claims for the April nonfarm payroll survey week and the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index. "Consumer sentiment is expected to remain mired in the recessionary zone, as gasoline prices continue to see upward pressure," Global Insight analysts Brian Bethune and Nigel Gault wrote in a client note.