The news of last week was Ben Bernanke, speaking before a House panel as part of the central bank's midyear forecast, and Bear Sterns's announcement of his hedge funds being worthless.  Bernanke said the economy should strengthen into 2008, but inflation risks remain the Fed's predominant concern. He added that the housing sector might get worse before it gets better, and that it remains a risk to consumer spending and overall economic growth. It was a non event, the market knew all that. The fact that Bear Sterns had such bad bets on subprime loans was more of a surprise.

So after all news hype of "Dow-and-S&P-at-record-levels" of the beginning of the week, the major indexes were all down and have had  a highly volatile end of the week with backups and lurches, probably the result of expiration of options and also the results of Caterpillar and Google, who missed analysts expectations.

Next week investors will receive more info on home sales, durable goods orders, GDP and consumer confidence along with another heavy dose of earnings reports. Jorge Manuel Gerivaz remains in the lead with gains of 287%, followed by Mr. Doleschall