The first big wave of earnings reports is expected in the week ahead, with major banks and financials, like J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo and American Express, and other blue chips like Intel and Johnson & Johnson releasing numbers for the past quarter.
But investors may not be too happy with what they hear. According to Reuters, for the first time in six years, earnings are in a real decline, expected to be negative with a 2.9 percent drop in S&P 500 net income. That comes as price-to-earnings ratios, or valuations are at the highest levels in a decade, and the question is whether those weak earnings are already priced into the market.
Numbers over the last quarters have topped Wall Street forecasts, beating them by a wide margin of 70 percent plus, and that's still what many strategists expect, even if profits fall below last year's level.
"I expect the market to remain largely range bound until we get further into the earnings season," said UBS equities strategist Julian Emanuel. His theory is that companies will beat sharply reduced guidance, clearing the way for the market to move ahead.
Economists on Wall Street's expect the slow-growing first quarter to give way to a spring rebound, and many analysts expect the earnings decline to end in the second half.
Not all analysts concur, however, believing that if the economic numbers don't pick up over the next month or two coming out of earnings season it might be a sign that the entire year could be a down year for earnings making late spring into early summer into a more volatile period.
Stocks were higher in the past week, with the Dow at 18,057, a gain of 1.7 percent. The S&P 500, meanwhile, was up 1.7 percent at 2102, and the Nasdaq was up more than 2.2 percent at 4,995.
Although stocks have struggled against a stronger dollar of late, last week was also a good one for the greenback. The dollar index gained 1.8 percent for the week to just over 99.30, as of the stock market close on Friday.