A Very Strange Year: Weekend Reading

Good Sunday afternoon, and welcome to another edition of Weekend Reading. First a look back at the week that just finished, then a look forward to the week ahead, and, lastly, a summary of articles and research papers worth reading.

It was a good week for the major U.S. markets. The S&P 500 gained 2.6%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.7% and the Nasdaq gained 3.1%. A week without bad macroeconomic news is apparently a happy one for the markets, and the advances came accordingly.

We sit in strange territory. One year after the Lehman collapse it is as if nothing has changed, and yet everything has changed. On the one hand, the financial landscape is utterly different, with a host of firms gone from the financial world, banks failing at a steady rate and the market back above the levels of a year ago, despite its precipitous tumble in the intervening period. Unemployment sits at high levels, consumers remain overleveraged, oil is back to levels once thought recession inducing and gold is at $1,000. On the other hand, not much really feels different at all. Speculation is increasing, chatter about equities is everywhere and even housing is advancing in some markets. A year feels like forever, and like no time at all.

Turning to economic indicators, next week will bring August retail sales, plus July business inventories and the Empire State manufacturing index. Also on tap will be the consumer price index and August industrial production.

Companies planning to report earnings next week include Best Buy(BBY Quote), Kroger(KR Quote), Adobe Systems(ADBE Quote), Oracle(ORCL Quote), Dress Barn(DBRN Quote),CKE Restaurants(CKR Quote) and FedEx(FDX Quote).