It was yet another very low volume market session that really proved nothing today that we did not already know about this market. The one bright spot that occurred today that was noticeable to me by the action in the stocks that were showing up on my price/volume scans. The IBD 100 gained a very impressive 1.5% compared to the overall market which was slightly lower across the board.

“The world's favorite season is the spring. All things seem possible in May,” said Edwin Way Teal. And so it seemed during the past week as we witnessed a further improvement in investor sentiment and risk appetite, supported by the viewpoint that the worst of the credit crisis might be behind us.

Gold expert Ed Bugos is back today to share his view of the recent market, including some of the latest numbers for Washington. He also gives you an opportunity to buy his five favorite penny stock plays that are set to shoot up as everything else falls apart.

The last week was characterized by investors increasingly taking the view that the worst of the credit crisis was over. They seemed to be shrugging off further substantiation of the dreadful state of the US housing situation, as they digested the latest round of quarterly earnings reports.

It’s Earnings, Stupid! Or so it seemed during the past week as the stock market took its cue from a host of better-than-feared earnings reports, propelling the S&P 500 Index 4.3% higher – a bigger gain than for the entire 2007. And what a swift turnaround it was after the market got “GE’d” and was in sackcloth and ashes by the close of the previous week!

Wall Street is rallying today, led by strong first-quarter results from JPMorgan, Coca-Cola and Intel that all topped projections. This is a wild reversal from last weeks earnings reports, giving the market a 150+ bps increase in afternoon trading.

A sense of relative calm descended upon financial markets over the past week. Although fears about the outlook for the US economy persisted, a perception crept into markets that much of the bad news related to the credit crisis was now out in the open, with the result that the equity bulls had reason to feel rather pleased with their performance by the close of the week.

Managers of two top-performing gold funds expect gold to soar further. Here's why, plus five stocks they expect to share the ride.

Gold bullion is under water at the moment with the price having dived sharply over the past two weeks. This move has triggered a myriad opinions ranging from the end of gold’s 7-year bull market to a mere healthy correction in an ongoing uptrend.

The gold bubble has popped and there goes the weasel. Commodities are done. Time to move into solars.

“This is one ‘mother’ of a market,” 83-year old market veteran Richard Russell aptly described what market participants were again faced with during the past week. Sentiment was fragile as the outlook was still dominated by the familiar cast of deteriorating economic data, housing woes and concerns about the financial sector.

Phew – what a tumultuous week! Once again, the fall-out of the subprime mess had a lot to do with it. For some variety, however, it was not only financials that were in the limelight, but also commodities that corrected sharply.

For months, wary investors bet their fortunes on the metals and raw materials that make up the commodities market, pushing prices for oil and gold into record territory even as stocks languished.

Can money trees in fact grow to heaven? It was certainly beginning to look that way when considering the frenzied surge of many commodities to new highs week after week. But the past few days have seen commodity prices pulling back from their lofty levels. What should one read in this?

Follow the link to a short article on the outlook for commodities.

The stock market investing environment is certainly scary to a lot of investors in the short term. With fears of a recession on the horizon, along with problems like the falling value of the U.S. dollar, rising commodity prices, distressed credit ratings and problems with inflation, the thought of pushing new money into the stock market is definitely not a popular idea.