Coming Week: Jobs on Tap

A bevy of earnings reports will also drift into the market again next week, though most of the biggest names have already come and gone. Big pharma firms Merck(MRK) and Pfizer(PFE) will report Tuesday morning, joining fellow Dow component and consumer discretionary player Kraft(KFT), which is scheduled to report Thursday afternoon.

A set of oil-related names like Marathon Oil(MRO), Forest Oil(FST), Baker Hughes(BHI), Murphy Oil(MUR) and Frontier Oil(FTO) are on tap, along with natural gas firms like XTO Energy(XTO) and Devon Energy(DVN).

But no other energy name may be in more focus than Transocean(RIG), which will report late Wednesday. Transocean, the biggest offshore driller in the world, is the owner of a rig that exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico. The rig was also leased by BP(BP) at the time of the accident. In the aftermath, officials worked feverishly to contain the resulting oil spill, while the White House signaled a moratorium on new offshore drilling until the cause of the spill was found. Questions centered around litigation, liability, insurance and oil interruption have swirled since the spill began, which was attracting associations in the media to the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989.

BP defended its safety record over the weekend as the spill got worse.

"What I think is happening is you're seeing some downgrades to the stock and the potential for the President to reverse a decision on opening up new drilling areas," Pavlik said of Transocean, who's shares fell 7.9% Friday. The firm is forecast to earn $2.09 a share in the first quarter, according consensus estimates provided by Briefing.com, after posting $3.75 a share in the year-ago quarter. "If that's the case, a company like RIG could be impacted because then day rates go down because the rigs are not in much demand. It won't necessarily play out in the earnings or the guidance."

-- Written by Sung Moss in New York

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