What a Week!

Stocks rallied five days in a row this week, with good participation and a return to form for the big leadership names (the Amazons and the Apples).

From the Wall Street Journal:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 75.91 points, or 0.7%, to 11509.09, on Friday, finishing the week with a 4.7% gain. The blue-chip index remains within striking distance of turning positive for the year.

Two positives:

Europe and the rest of the world’s central banks have decided “not to have another Lehman Brothers” with their coordinated plan to offer dollar liquidity through the end of the year while the individual countries and banks figure out the way forward.  For a really good explanation of the five potential outcomes there, check out Nomura’s take over at Pragmatic Capitalism:

5 POSSIBLE OUTCOMES FOR THE EURO CRISIS (PragCap)

Also, the Nasdaq – clearly the market-leading index – was an absolute beast this week.  The index gained 154 points or 6.5% since Monday.  According to MarketBeat that’s the biggest weekly percentage gain since the week ended July 17th 2009.

Here’s the Nasdaq 100 jumping above the 50-day SMA:

Bottom line, with the techs leading, the Europe crisis momentarily pacified and the best six-month period for the market ahead of us, it’s hard not to be encouraged by the action this week.

Now if only the economic data weren’t deteriorating and we could get some damn traction from the macro…