Retailers will start to release second-quarter results this week, accounting for nearly 10% of the 246 scheduled reports. Dow component Wal-Mart (WMT) will be joined by 15 other members of the S&P 500, including J.C. Penney (JCP), Kohl's (KSS) and Macy's (M).

The Fed will hold a 2-day meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday. No change in interest rates will be made, though the statement should acknowledge that the economy is nearing stabilization.

The bond markets could be volatile, not only because of the Fed meeting, but also because of quarterly refunding. The Treasury Department will auction 3-year, 10-year and 30-year bonds. The offerings should total $75 billion.

Most of the week's economic data will be released after the Fed's meeting, with the exception of the preliminary estimate of Q2 productivity. We'll see the latest industrial production and consumer sentiment numbers on Friday.

Tuesday: Q2 productivity Wednesday: June

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Oil rose more than $2 to hit a one-month high near $72 on Monday as positive Chinese economic data and firmer equities bolstered hopes of economic recovery and higher energy demand.

U.S. crude rose as much as $2.37 to hit $71.82 a barrel, the highest since July 1. By 1351 GMT, it was trading $1.73 higher at $71.18.

Brent crude gained $1.46 to $73.16.

“We are getting close to the resistance area for crude oil and we need the continued support of equities,” said Olivier Jakob, an analyst at Petromatrix. “As long as this continues, the dips are going to be bought.”

European shares hit a new high for 2009, led by banks. U.S. stocks opened higher.

The latest gain in oil prices brings oil within sight of the 2009 high of $73.38 set in June, where Jakob and other analysts who use past price moves to predict direction see key resistance that prices could struggle to

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I thought we would put up a link to this piece from the New York Times, as it highlights how the situation in Urumqi, China has spiraled out of control - in a way that has the Russian leadership very concerned.

"Where were the police while people were being killed?" said Cheng Wei, 41, a landscaper whose neighbors, poor fruit vendors from Henan Province, lost a son in the riots. "They were completely useless."

Large street protests that turn violent, and that officials and security forces have been powerless to stop, have been on the rise in recent years, analysts say. The government usually avoids reporting the number of protests or riots in China, but an article in January in Outlook Weekly, a policy magazine published by Xinhua, the state news agency, said there were 90,000 such events in 2006, up from 60,000 in

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Wal-Mart (

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Here are five reasons I don't believe this rally has legs ... and why I find XLF's 10% run today rather incredible.

Well, Matt—if your research holds any water, today must have been a BOOM day for the (RAFI) fundamentalists out there. And this huge rally for XLF? I don't believe it for a second. In fact, the same dangerous impulses that led me to buy XLF at $15.07 (and see it promptly drop to below $6) are urging me to sell now that we're almost touching $12. After all, in that October binge of ETF buying (heavy on XLF and FXI—that would be the SPDRs Financials and the FTSE/Xinhua iShares for the less-ETF-focused among you), I'm actually AHEAD right now ... after a disastrous start.

In this environment, I'm looking forward to talking to Rob Arnott this Thursday at 1:00 p.m., where he'll be doing a webinar

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REUTERS By Alfred Cang and Lucy Hornby SHANGHAI/BEIJING, April 24 (Reuters) - China revealed on Friday that it had quietly raised its gold reserves by three-quarters since 2003, increasing its holdings to 1,054 tonnes and confirming years of speculation it had been buying. Hu Xiaolian, head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), told Xinhua news agency [...]div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=wIbNeFyoTOI:DXZwKbfnZfM:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=wIbNeFyoTOI:DXZwKbfnZfM:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?i=wIbNeFyoTOI:DXZwKbfnZfM:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=wIbNeFyoTOI:DXZwKbfnZfM:7Q72WNTAKBA"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=wIbNeFyoTOI:DXZwKbfnZfM:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?i=wIbNeFyoTOI:DXZwKbfnZfM:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=wIbNeFyoTOI:DXZwKbfnZfM:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=wIbNeFyoTOI:DXZwKbfnZfM:l6gmwiTKsz0"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?d=l6gmwiTKsz0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=wIbNeFyoTOI:DXZwKbfnZfM:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?i=wIbNeFyoTOI:DXZwKbfnZfM:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a /div

Alex#8217;s Notes: China#8217;s gold reserves appear to have increased substantially since last officially reported. According to the World Gold Council, China#8217;s reserves in gold has been stable at 600 tons for a number of years. An increase to 1054 tons is substantial. 04.24.09, 12:17 AM EDT CHINA-GOLD/ (URGENT):China says has 1,054 tonnes of gold -Xinhua pic BEIJING, April 24 (Reuters) - [...]div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=NNAIp6AVyag:6gEnzjGzscs:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=NNAIp6AVyag:6gEnzjGzscs:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?i=NNAIp6AVyag:6gEnzjGzscs:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=NNAIp6AVyag:6gEnzjGzscs:7Q72WNTAKBA"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=NNAIp6AVyag:6gEnzjGzscs:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?i=NNAIp6AVyag:6gEnzjGzscs:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=NNAIp6AVyag:6gEnzjGzscs:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=NNAIp6AVyag:6gEnzjGzscs:l6gmwiTKsz0"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?d=l6gmwiTKsz0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=NNAIp6AVyag:6gEnzjGzscs:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?i=NNAIp6AVyag:6gEnzjGzscs:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a /div

There is tremendous concentration of day-to-day price movements recently and understandably so with all the carnage and fear. However, it may be helpful to zoom out a little bit to look at some longer periods.

Buying rising funds makes more sense than buying flat or declining funds, but you still need to consider how the fund objective fits into your concept of the overall markets and economy, how good the fundamentals of the underlying portfolio are, how attractive the valuation is, and what risks could upset the apple cart for the fund.  At a minimum, though, it would be best if the fund were rising not falling when you buy it, and to continue to hold it.

Today we looked at the 183 largest ETFs by Dollar trading volume, and queried which were rising and falling based on the 52-week, 26-week, 13-week and 4-week simple moving averages.

We defined “rising” this way:

52-week SMA ...

Can I take a moment to be indignant, to be infuriated at where we find ourselves?

Matt's blog takes a look at the stunning fall from grace of AIG in the form of $61.7 billion in quarterly losses. Quarterly losses! Meanwhile, the U.S. government announces it's pouring another $30 billion to add on to the $150 billion we've already poured into the black hole that is AIG.

It all brings to mind images of semitrucks full of hundred-dollar bills pulling out of Baghdad in the wake of the last invasion. I've got a question: How do we, the U.S. government, only own 80% of a company that we've poured $180 billion into when it's only got a market cap (as of yesterday) of $1.13 billion? Isn't anyone in jail yet? Lined up at the gallows? It feels like the biggest heist in the history of the

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Yesterday, we saw articles and interviews alternately asserting that China was the leader, that Brazil was the leader, and that the US was the leader. None of those headlines gave enough information for a discriminating audience to put the data and the assertions into an overall context.

Your job as an investor includes being aware of your time frame, the time frame in the news references you read or hear, and to carefully parse the information to avoid being confused or misinformed.

Let’s look at this issue with respect to the relative price performance (not total return, which includes dividends) of the US and the BRIC markets using StockCharts.com index data:

US – S&P 500 (index symbol $SPX)
Brazil – Bovespa (index symbol $BVSP)
Russia – Russian Trading System (index symbol $RTSI)
India – Bombay Stock Exchange (index symbol $BSE)
China – FTSE/Xinhua 25 (index symbol $FXT)

The table below ranks each country index from 1 through 5

…