Market Crosscurrents: Weekend Reading

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- 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, some articles and papers worth reading.

It was an impressive week for the major indices. All three were up 4% or more, and other exchanges worldwide did almost as well. It was partly optimism about the prospects for continuing recovery, partly solid earnings and a general sense that things can continue improving.

Earnings reports will continue to pour out this week, and many of them should be solid, especially given the depths from which we have rebounded. At the same time, however, there are important cracks in the facade, including a wobbly 30-year Treasury bond auction last week, immense state budget problems, a diving dollar, soaring gold and so on. The conflicting crosscurrents in capital markets remain among the most contradictory and difficult in memory.

Turning to economic indicators, next week will see the September retail sales report, the consumer price index for September and initial claims for jobless insurance.

As for earnings, next week will bring reports from Intel(INTC Quote), Johnson & Johnson(JNJ Quote), JPMorgan Chase(JPM Quote), Goldman Sachs(GS Quote), Bank of America(BAC Quote) and General Electric(GE Quote).