Stocks posted the sixth consecutive weekly gain, with the Dow Jones Industrial flirting with 11,000. We had good jobs report and better than expected same store sales that signaled that the U.S. economy is recovering. Treasuries had a strong week on interest rate outlook and auction demand.

March jobs report released on Friday showed the biggest increase in job creation in 3 years, as employers added 162,000 jobs!

Energy and commodity related shares led the way as the Dollar weakened versus the euro, as Greece’s debt worries eased and European confidence in the economic outlook improved to the highest in almost two years in March, beating economists’ forecasts and signaling the recovery is gathering strength.

Commodity traders are smiling happily because of the rally in gold, copper and aluminum prices. Gold rose to the highest price in four weeks and copper climbed to a 20-month high.

Stock market’s outlook looks brighter for the coming week. Earnings season starts on Monday. Dow is flirting with 11,000 psychological level for the first time since September 2008. Earnings from the following companies will decide the direction for the market. All these companies are scheduled to announce earnings in the next two weeks.

• Infosys Technologies on April 13th

• JP Morgan Chase on April 14th

• Intutive Surgical on April 15th

• Google on April 15th

• General Electric on April 16th

• Bank of America on April 16th

• Citibank on April 19th

• Goldman Sachs, Yahoo and Apple on April 20th

• Microsoft on April 22nd

After a slightly disappointing employment number last Friday the stock market and investors turn their full attention to quarter four earnings results, which will start coming in this week. As they always are earnings will be very important to the direction of the market, since they are a good snapshot of the economy in the past and a look at the future. In times of possible recovery like we are in right now the stock market pays extra close attention to every little detail that comes out of every company, especially those that are considered blue chip stocks.

Alcoa will kick off earnings season this evening with its fourth quarter results. Later in the week there will be even more important reports from companies like Intel and JP Morgan Chase. A bellwether from the tech space and the banking industry will be a nice preview to what may be to come from both of those all important sectors. Expect the market to pay close attention to those companies who have led the recovery in stock prices, because they will want to see if the gains were actually legitimate or just a result of pure speculation.

Keep in mind that companies will have very easy comparisons during this time period since this time a year ago was when the recession was at its deepest point. Most companies will be able to do far better this year than they did last year at this time. The most important part of earnings season in a time like this is probably the forward looking statements, since the market wants to know what to make of the economy and 2010 corporate earnings.

Keep a close eye on the industry leaders and remember that the future is more important than the past right now. Look for any kind of trends in the data to see if a real recovery is beginning to take place. Earnings season is about to get under way, and the wise investor will pay close attention!

Official start of the third-quarter earnings cycle was kicked off with Alcoa’s (AA) earnings yesterday after market hours. Alcoa, the world’s largest aluminum producer, was the first component of the Dow to report. They announced a surprise third-quarter profit, helped by higher aluminum prices and demand. Profit came in at $77 million or 8 cents a share, beating forecasts. Although well down from the year-ago period, it ended three straight quarters of losses due to slender demand for aluminum used in cars, homes and airplanes. The company said there finally seems to be stabilizing due to distributors’ low inventories. Spot aluminum prices have risen nicely since June; at the end of September, Alcoa’s average price per metric ton rose 18% to $1,972. Demand for the metal is up, mostly led by China replenishing its stockpiles.

Alcoa’s surprise earnings report is a good signal for the entire market. Before the bell today, shares of Alcoa shot up 5.2 percent to $14.94. PepsiCo (PEP) also reported a stronger-than-expected quarterly profit on higher volume in snacks and beverages, sending its shares up 1.2 percent to $61.90 before the bell. It’s really a robust start to the earnings season. This is going to give the market an upward bias for at least few more weeks or until some major company screws up with its earnings.

Initial claims for jobless benefits fell by 33,000 to 521,000 in the week ended Oct. 3, the Labor Department said, the lowest level since Jan. 3. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had expected a decrease of only 11,000. The number of continuing claims drawn by workers for more than one week in the week ended Sept. 26 fell by 72,000 to 6,040,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 6,112,000. That represents the lowest figure since March 28.

Retailers are posting higher-than-expected September same-store sales, even as analysts raised their estimates as the month came to a close, with the outperformance potentially enough to end a year-long streak of falling sales. Costco reported a 3% gain excluding gasoline sales, doubling analysts’ expectations. Walgreen reported higher non-pharmacy sales last week. Not all retailers are doing well, but most of them reporting better sales.

Alcoa’s surprise earnings, deeper-than-expected fall in jobless benefit claims and better-than-expected retail sales are going to cause fireworks in Wall Street today. About 25 minutes before the start of trading in New York, Dow Jones industrial average futures gained 86 points and Nasdaq 100 futures added 16 points.

Go and make lot of Moola now!

Alcoa is announcing earnings today which means today marks the unofficial beginning of the earnings season on Wall Street. Earnings season is always very important to the stock market and the economy, but because of the uncertainty surrounding the economic recovery this season will be under the microscope even more.

What do these earnings reports need to show to prove that a recovery is starting and the recession has finally ended? The single biggest thing that we need to see is top line revenue growth from businesses. In the last quarter many companies reported earnings that beat expectations, but the majority of the time that was because of cost cutting measures. Eventually a company reaches a point where they can no longer cut costs and they must just grow their revenues, and Wall Street wants to see this occurring.

These earnings reports are likely to show how confident the business sector is as well as how the consumer is doing. Look at retailers earnings and consumer service related earnings to see the strength of the consumer. Some high profile companies are much more closely tied to business or government spending, such as infrastructure and some technology companies such as Cisco.

Alcoa isn’t the most important of companies that announces earnings, but it may be important to how the market views the season overall. If the company is able to get things started on a positive note the market is liable to benefit quite quickly. PepsiCo is also set to announce to earnings this week, so we will see results from a huge international powerhouse in food and beverages sector.

Expect the market to react in a big way to earnings reports this season. If high profile misses start becoming commonplace this market will find its way quite a bit lower, but if top line revenue growth starts showing up this nice move upward may well continue.

It’s the most important time of the quarter for Wall Street as earnings season begins in earnest this week. More people than normal will be following corporate earnings reports this quarter because of the magnifying glass that is being put on the global economy. Every single number that is released will be analyzed more critically than ever, and that really is the way it should be. Another part of this earnings season that will be so important is the commentary about the future. It isn’t just the analysts that want to know, the entire country wants to know, are things getting any better?

The importance of earnings season has never been greater, but I think of even greater importance is the fact that we get earnings reports we can actually trust. In the past quarters there has been a lot of accounting maneuvers by firms that make earnings look much better than they truly are, which misleads investors and is just plain wrong. Because the financial firms have been those who have been hit the hardest by the credit crisis, and many have been guilty of artificially propping up earnings, those financials that report their earnings will be watched the most closely of all. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and General Electric are all going to be reporting earnings this week, and those reports will be crucial to the overall market direction.

It is a given that the earnings reports will be ugly, because the economy as a whole has been in a major mess. We can take the bad news, but we just need the companies to be completely level with us. The thing that I sincerely hope that we can begin to do once again, is trust that corporations are reporting to us the actual financial standing of their businesses and not simply a facade.