Post date: Jun 08, 2012 10:48:25 PM
Wall Street bets on a Spanish bank bailout agreement over the weekend, sending shares higher on Friday, finishing the best one-week rally of the year for the S&P 500.
USA-USCLOSE - Investors found enough courage to do some more buying with hopes pinned on Spain.
Europe's fourth largest economy is expected to seek a bailout of its banks over the weekend, according to German and European Union sources.
Wall Street strengthened into the close with a near triple digit gain for the Dow; cementing the best week for stocks this year: blue chips jumped 3.6 percent, the Nasdaq surged 4 percent.
But investors could be setting themselves up for a nasty reversal warns Craig Dismuke of Vining Sparks.
CRAIG DISMUKE, CHIEF ECONOMIC STRATEGIST, VINING SPARKS SAYING:
"I think that there is an expectation that you will see some type of a request for financial aid officially and you'll officially see a response, so if there is not one, what it does is it leaves uncertainty out there. It leaves this overhanging uncertainty, which creates fear and sends investors in risk-less or less-riskier assets."
If Spanish banks are rescued it would be the biggest bailout since the European debt crisis began.
The dollar cost of the crisis is showing up at McDonald's. Sales at restaurants opened more than a year were lower than expected. The fast food giant warned austerity measures in Europe, its biggest market, are taking a bite out of revenues. McDonald's is also seeing weaker sales in the U.S. and Asia.
FedEx is raising rates for its FedEx Freight unit by about 7 percent. It raised shipping costs for its Express and Ground divisions earlier this year.
And speaking of shipping, the U.S. trade gap with the rest of the world shrank in April; another sign of slowing global business.
Taking a look at European markets: stocks slipped on fear the Chinese economy is weaker than thought.
Conway Gittens, Reuters