Are You a Bull or a Bear? Vote in Our Poll
The U.S. stock market has had a bumpy but positive go of it lately. The previous week's wild bull run for crude oil cooled off in recent days. Meanwhile, the tech sector and gold prices put in some solid moves as blue-chips gained more modestly. The Dow closed on Friday at 12,638.32, the S&P 500 finished at 1,400.38 and the Nasdaq ended at 2,522.66.
On Thursday, computer maker
Dell
(DELL) - Get Report
delivered an earnings beat, spurring speculation on Wall Street that CEO Michael Dell may have turned the company around after two disappointing quarters. Tech titan
Cisco
(CSCO) - Get Report
posted solid gains for the week, while
Intel
(INTC) - Get Report
shares put in a more lackluster performance.
Elsewhere in tech, billionaire investor Carl Icahn got approval from the Federal Trade Commission to expand his stake in
Yahoo!
(YHOO)
. He, along with oil and gas legend T. Boone Pickens and activist investor Daniel Loeb, are hoping to agitate for a merger between Yahoo! and
Microsoft
(MSFT) - Get Report
.
Next week, homebuilders
Toll Brothers
(TOL) - Get Report
and
Hovnanian
(HOV) - Get Report
will report earnings. Investors will look at those results to gain insight into the state of the ailing housing market.
More broadly, economic data from the Labor Department will provide another glimpse into the current state of the economy.
Where do the markets go from here? Will stocks continue to trot along the green-flanked path to higher prices, or wallow in the red-soaked despair of a selloff? Is the recent retreat in oil prices a short-term phenomenon, or is the commodities trade unwinding? What lies in store for the world of finance in the coming week? Vote in our poll to publicize your prognostications.
This article was written by a staff member of TheStreet.com.