Last week Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Citigroup announced earnings that beat the street’s expectations. All of them except JP Morgan traded down even after delivering better news. Bank of America and Wells Fargo are going to report this week.

Bank America reports today before market. Every investor out there is going to watch what they say about TARP, the stress test and their failed acquisitions. Wells Fargo will announce their earnings on Wednesday before market. Wells Fargo has already guided higher so every one is going to focus on Bank of America. Wall Street is expecting a profit of 4 to 5 cents a share from Bank of America compared to 23 cents a year ago.

Capital One is going to report on Tuesday. Capital One serves the high credit risk customers. We have to see whether their consumer credit quality is still declining. If Capital One gives us some positive surprise, the market will rally.

Apart from the banks, we have other major companies that report earnings this week. Apple Inc is going to report Wednesday after market. Investors have questions about whether iPhone sales are doing ok, effect of competition from Blackberry, Mac Sales, etc., Apple’s stock rallied in the past two weeks. We will know whether this rally is sustainable on Wednesday.

UPS is going to report on Thursday before market. It will give us the state of the shipping business. It will also give us the clue about e-commerce trends.

Once upon a time, everyone was eagerly waiting for earnings results from Yahoo. I don’t think anyone cares about them now. Yahoo reports tomorrow. EBay reports on Wednesday. Microsoft reports on Thursday. These results will give us clues about technology sector.

We have to watch for reports from Ford, which reports on Friday before market, to see the signs of recovery in Detroit. In the oil and energy sectors, Schlumberger reports on Friday before market, Conoco Phillips and Occidental report on Thursday before market. Halliburton reports today before market. These results will give us indications about the health of overall economy.

Keep your fingers crossed before you hit the buy button in your online brokerage account!

Related Link: Earnings Season

A few weeks ago when the Federal Reserve began buying millions of dollars worth of treasury bills the primary goal was thought to be a revival in the mortgage sector. The Federal Reserve knew that by purchasing so much money in the treasury market it would force mortgage rates lower, which it hoped would cause some increased activity in the mortgage area that has been hit so hard in the last few quarters.

While it has just been a little over three weeks since the plan was announced the Federal Reserve’s plan seems to be working quite well. There have been some very encouraging signs in the mortgage sector in the past few weeks that probably couldn’t have occurred if it weren’t for the strong actions taken by the Fed in the last few months. In the past few weeks mortgage rates have plunged to some of their lowest levels in the past 30 years, and it seems that consumers have paid close attention to that drop in rates. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association applications for refinancing are up 129% since the end of February, which is not a bit surprising. Even more encouraging though is the fact that applications for home purchases were up 22% in the same time period. While it is true that refinancing their mortgage is the first thing on many people’s minds, home owners are also beginning to come out of the wood work, which is great news for the overall economy.

Just yesterday Wells Fargo became the first major bank to give us some hard data to show that the mortgage resurgence is actually making a huge difference to their bottom line. In fact the company pre-announced record profits that shocked the street and helped stocks finish a shortened week up in a big way.

These are all very short-term findings so there certainly needs to be continued strength before too much is read into these data points, but it certainly is nice to see some encouraging news from the mortgage sector!