Following yesterday's testimony from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, if there was a week where investors may have wanted a weaker than expected jobless claims report, it was probably this one. While claims did not come in higher than expected this week, they were only modestly better than expected, so those investors will have to take what they can get. While economists were looking for weekly claims to come in at 345K, the actual level came in at 340K, representing a 23K drop from last week.

(click to enlarge)With this week's decline, the

Earlier today we looked at US sector weightings, and below we take a look at the percentage of total world stock market cap that the largest countries make up. As shown below, the US and Japan, which were the two largest stock markets at the start of the year, have added

While the S&P 500 had a big downside reversal lower today, it's still more than 8% above the average year-end price target that Wall Street strategists placed on the index at the start of 2013. Below is a table highlighting these price targets (collected by Bloomberg), including where they are now and where they were on Jan. 1. Price targets shaded in green have been increased since the start of the year.

As shown, even with increases from eight strategists, the average year-end S&P 500 price target

Because of Apple's (AAPL) struggles this year, the S&P 500 technology sector has been one of the weaker performing sectors so far in 2013. This has allowed the financial sector to make up significant ground in its race to take back its spot as the biggest sector in the market.

Below is a look at the current weightings of the 10 S&P 500 sectors compared to where they stood at the end of 2011 and 2012. As shown, at the end of 2011, the technology sector made up 19.02% of the S&P 500, while the financial sector was at 13.43%. The financial sector made nice gains on tech in 2012 as it narrowed the gap by 2.27 percentage points (18.95% vs. 15.63%). Over the first five and a half months of 2013, the spread has tightened even more, and the financial sector is now just 1.3 percentage points below tech.

The chart below shows the annual real rate of U.S. GDP growth going back to 1930. In the last 84 years, the U.S. economy has averaged an annual growth rate of 3.34%. For the chart, we have color coded each year based on whether or not annual GDP growth was above (gray) or below (red) 3.0%. Currently, the U.S. economy is in the midst of its eighth straight year in which annual growth has been (or will be) below 3%. This eight years also happens to coincide with the entire tenure of Ben Bernanke as the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

This week's of release of inventories for crude oil and natural gas were both higher than expected. With regard to crude oil, traders were expecting a decline of one million barrels,

For Fed watchers out there, today is one of the good days. Already, we have seen NY Fed President William Dudley make headlines when he said that it will take another three or four months before Fed policymakers will know whether or not the economy is on firm enough footing to start easing on stimulus. At 10 am, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will be testifying in front of a Congressional Committee on the Fed's outlook for the economy. If that's not enough to tide you over, at 2 pm we will get the release of the FOMC minutes from the 4/30-5/1 meeting.

So far in 2013, days where the Fed has released the minutes from a prior meeting have not exactly been positive for the market. The charts below show the intraday trading of the S&P 500 on each of the days where the FOMC released the minutes from a

Lately, it is not only the stock market that

While it may seem like stocks are going up everywhere, one country where they have not been recently is Mexico. Due

After falling 84% from high to low during the financial crisis, the S&P 500 financial sector is now up 231% from its low back in 2009. As shown in the long-term chart below, the sector has really charged higher this year, breaking out of a multi-year sideways range that had been in place. That being said, the chart really shows just how far the financial sector still has to go to get back to where it was pre-crisis.

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The rally in financial stocks has coincided with a big drop in default risk for stocks in the sector. Below we provide charts of five-year credit default swap prices (in basis points) for the six largest banks and brokers here in the U.S. The price shown is basically the yearly cost in dollars to insure $10,000 of debt from default over the next five years. As shown, default risk

The S&P 500's P/E ratio has been seeing some pretty rapid expansion this year as the market has charged higher. As shown below, last year at this time the S&P's trailing 12 months P/E ratio was below 14. Now it's up to 16.13.

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While the one-year P/E ratio chart above looks pretty alarming, a longer-term chart looks much less so. Below is a chart

After several weeks of better than expected reports, Thursday morning's reading of initial jobless claims for the latest week came in significantly higher than expected (360K vs 330K). It was also the highest weekly reading since late March. Initial jobless claims had a been a bright spot over the last several weeks even as most other data was weaker than expected, so today's report was a disappointment for bulls.

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The market is on quite a run right now, and it has pushed 90% of the stocks in the S&P 500 above their 50-day moving averages. Below is a list of the 40 stocks in the index that are the farthest above their 50-days as of late Tuesday afternoon. Keep in mind that 10% above the 50-day is pretty high, so the fact that all of the stocks shown below are more than 11.5% above their 50-days is pretty crazy.

As shown below, Advanced Micro (AMD) tops the list at more than 50% above its 50-day! First Solar (FSLR) ranks second at 44.58% above, followed by Regeneron Pharma (REGN), GameStop (GME) and Actavis (ACT). Other notables on the list include Netflix (NFLX), JC Penney (JCP), Biogen (BIIB), Whole Foods (WFM), Coach (COH), Disney (DIS)

Below is a list of 2013 and quarter-to-date stock market returns for 77 countries around the world. Of the 77 countries shown, 60 are in the green for the year, while 17 are in the red. As shown, Japan is now up the most of any country with a YTD gain of 45.22%. Japan is already up 21.76% in the second quarter as well. This gain of 21.76% for Japan doesn't even rank it first for the second quarter, however. Greece is actually doing the best of any country in the second quarter with a gain of 28.13%. Dubai ranks second for the quarter with a gain of 25%.

On the downside, Peru has been the worst country so far this year with a decline of 15.73%. The Ukraine ranks second to last with a decline of 10.44%, followed by Colombia at -9.8%. Two BRICs round out the

Below is a look at our trading range charts for the S&P 500 and its 10 sectors. In each chart, the blue shading represents the sector's "normal" trading range, which is between one standard deviation above and below its 50-day moving average (white line). The red zone represents between one and two standard deviations above the 50-day, and vice versa for the green zone. Moves into or above the red zone are considered "overbought," while moves into or below the green zone are considered "oversold."

As shown, the S&P 500 has pretty much been trading in overbought territory all year now, and the index is currently at its most overbought levels in more than a year. Stocks and indices can stay overbought for a long time, but historically they have not remained as extended as the S&P is now for too long. We would expect some sort of cool down

Today's release of weekly energy inventories from the Department of Energy (DoE) showed an unexpected decrease in crude oil inventories and an unexpected build in gasoline stockpiles. In the crude oil space, traders were expecting inventories to rise by 450,000 barrels, but actual inventories declined by 624,000 barrels. Even

Bulls looking for some confirmation of recent better-than-expected economic data did not get it this morning from the Empire Manufacturing report (or for that matter, Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization). While economists were forecasting the headline reading to increase from +3 to +4, the actual reading came in weaker than expected at -1.4, and it represented the lowest reading since January.

This month's reading showed broad based weakness as seven out of the 10 subcomponents were negative and none of the categories showed an increase vs. April's reading.

While Prices Paid currently has the highest reading at 20.5, it also saw the largest decline on the month as it was at a level of 28.4 last month. After Prices Paid, the next largest decline came in the Average Workweek, which fell from 5.7 in April to negative 1.1 in May. The decline in the average workweek comes on the heels