Weekly Market Wrap: 5/13/2010

(MarketNewsVideo.com) -- Hi. I'm SAYOKO MURASE. Welcome to the Weekly Market Wrap for Friday, May 14, 2010.

Major U.S. markets closed higher for the week. The S&P 500 closed higher and the Nasdaq Composite Index did, as well. The Dow Industrials rose for the week.

Crude oil futures were lower for the week. Oil was trading around $71.22 a barrel on Friday afternoon.

The price of gold went edged higher for the week to around $1232 an ounce.

The week started with the EU annoucing that it was creating a $1 trillion fund to backstop its member countries. The European Union plans to raise the money with the help of the IMF so that funds are available to member countries when capital cannot be accessed in the markets. Speculation has been growing over the last few weeks that more countries in the EU could be facing the same problems that Greece has encountered, but the new fund alleviated those concerns for now. On Friday, the euro sank to just above a 4-year low against the dollar, trading just below $1.24.

U.S. retail sales rose and industrial production increased in April, as did consumer confidence, indicating that the economy continues to recover. Retail sales climbed 0.4 percent, double what what analysts had expected. The Federal Reserve said that industrial production increased 0.8 percent and capacity utilization rose to 73.7 percent.

Also this week, the Labor Department announced that initial jobless claims fell by 4,000 in the week ending May 8, to 444,000, not as big of a decline as economists had predicted.

In earnings news this week, several key retailers announced strong results. J.C. Penney announced taht Net income rose to $60 million or 25 cents per share versus $25 million or 11 cents per share in the same period last year, while revenue increased by 1.2 percent to $3.93 billion.

Macy's announced that it swung to a profit in its fiscal first quarter and beat expectations. The department store operator said first quarter earnings totaled $23 million, or $0.05 per share, vs. a loss of $88 million, or $0.21 per share, in the same quarter last year. Sales were up more than 7% to $5.57 billion.

Kohl's said first quarter earnings totaled $199 million, or $0.64 per share, vs. $137 million, or $0.45 per share, in the same quarter last year.

Urban Outfitters posted a 72% surge in first-quarter earnings to $53 million, or $0.31 per share. Sales were up 25%, to $480 million, driven by its Anthropologie stores as well as its online business.

Shares of BP continue to be under pressure this week as the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to grow at a rate of over 5000 barrels per days. In testimony this week, executives of BP, Haliburton, and Transocean seemed to be blaming one another for the series of failures that led to the disaster and not threatens the Gulf Coast states.

This is the Weekly Market Wrap for Friday, May 13. Please join us on Monday for the Week Ahead Market Report.

The preceeding is a transcript of the MarketNewsVideo.com video published at: http://www.marketnewsvideo.com/?id=201005WeeklyWrap051410&mv=1.