Weekend Reading: Relief Spell

Good Sunday morning. As always, here are some articles and papers worth reading. First, however, a look back at the week that just finished, and a look forward to the week ahead.

After feeling recently like the end is nigh, investors can be forgiven if they thought this past week was a kind of relief. It wasn't much relief, however, because two of the three major markets still lost ground. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq ended the week down 0.1% and 0.2%, respectively, while the Dow gained 1.1%. Click here for the weekly performance.

Let's put all the recent action in perspective. For the year, the Dow is up 2.8%, and the S&P 500 is up 0.3%. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq is down 3.4%. The general sense out there seems to be that the indices will make at least a little upward progress for a spell, at least until Fed Chairman Bernanke gets in front of a microphone again. (The best Bernanke headline last week came from The Wall Street Journal: "Bernanke Speaks. No-one Dies.") ...