Coming Week: And the Winner Is...

"People are glad to have the election decided and have that uncertainty taken out of the market," he says. "I think the election will be dominant next week, and it will be a good influence, but the other things could be bad influences."

Those factors, according to Dorfman, will be auto-sales reports on Monday, factory-orders data on Tuesday, and employment figures over the following three days. If recent economic trends are any indication, good news from any of those reports might be in short supply.

But, as Womack notes, in today's market, expectations are everything. Investors are not questioning whether the economic outlook is bad, but how bad -- and how long the downturn will last.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the week up 11%, jumping 943 points to 9322, surging nearly 900 points on Tuesday alone. The market discounted a slew of mostly negative economic news, including a sharp decline in consumer spending and sentiment, higher mortgage rates and a 0.3% drop in economic output last quarter.

Several factors have contributed to the relatively bullish sentiment of the last few sessions. Among them, bargain hunters have started to dip their toes back into the market, as values of even large, stable household names plunged. While no one can say for sure, the forced liquidation of hedge funds seems to have abated somewhat, just as retail investors and institutional funds have begun to come off the sidelines.

"We've had a buyer's strike here," says Robert Bacarella, president and portfolio manager of the Monetta Fund. "Actually, a combination of sellers and a buyer's strike. But that could be behind us."