Market Wrap-Up

The saga surrounding the U.S. automobile industry took another turn Friday as leaders in the Senate couldn't muster enough votes to pass a bailout plan that could have provided around $15 billion to the Big Three car makers. With Detroit twisting in the wind, it fell upon the White House to bang out some kind of last-minute compromise. It appears the Bush administration is angling to use some of the TARP funds to help GM (GM), Ford (F) and Chrysler. Heads of those companies held out hope the White House would come through in the clutch, and so did the market, allowing the week to end on an up note.

On Monday, stocks jumped 295 points on the announcement the new presidential administration will launch a massive infrastructure stimulus plan as soon as it gets in office in January. That plan could top $500 billion and create millions of new jobs. That enthusiastic start to the week, though, was quickly overshadowed by the mess in Detroit and other poor economic news.

Investors once again got spotty news on the housing industry, consumer spending and corporate earnings projections. FedEx (FDX), seen as a bellwether of the health of the economy, ratcheted down its earnings guidance. Meanwhile, corruption dominated the headlines, too. The governor of Illinois was arrested for allegedly trying to "sell" the vacated Senate seat in that state in exchange for political favors. An investment firm run in New York City run by Bernard Madoff appears to be nothing by a Ponzi scheme, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal. The firm could wind up costing its investors hedge funds, charities and wealthy individuals as much as $50 billion. The demise of this firm originally tanked trading Friday morning.

Obviously, all that made for an interesting trading week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the week by adding 64 points to 8629, off 8 points from where it opened the week.

Crude finished at $46 per barrel level. It sold off most of the week due to concerns over diminishing demand and slow economic growth, despite what should be a deep production cut announcement next week by OPEC.

Winners

President-elect Obama's stimulus plan, which could be the largest since the 1950s, made infrastructure plays the week's big gainers. Market Vectors Steel (SLX) climbed 16.5% in light trading. The SPDR S&P Metals & Mining fund (XME) increased 14.7%. Market Vectors Coal (KOL) rose 10.9%.

Losers

It was another down week for financials. The sector struggled under the weight of poor corporate news and the seemingly ever-present concern that all the government money being doled out won't be able to keep some of these firms afloat.

XL Capital, the large insurance outfit, appears to be on the auction block after announcing large losses. That revelation led to a heavy selloff of the iShares Dow Jones U.S. Insurance (IAK) ETF. It dropped 12.2% since the week s open. Banks also took it on the chin. The iShares Dow Jones U.S. Regional Banks (IAT) ETF lost 16.7%.

This Week's Industry Headlines

Data Point
State Street came out with its monthly snapshot on the ETF industry. As of the end of November, 735 ETFs held $477.4 billion. Assets fell during the month by $5.5 billion, or 1.1%. There were 34 new launches. Click here to see the full report.

Launching Pad
Vanguard announced it has filed with the SEC for approval of the Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-U.S. Small Cap ETF. The ETF will track a benchmark consisting of more than 3,300 companies in 47 countries.

Claymore filed with the SEC to launch the Claymore/NYSE Arca Airline ETF. This fund will track 24 companies in that industry.

Tax Time
Invesco PowerShares announced 119 of its 120 funds would pay zero capital gains distributions for 2008. The only fund to pay a distribution was the PowerShares S&P 500 BuyWrite Portfolio (PBP), which uses a unique covered call strategy on that benchmark.

Next Week's Notebook

Earnings & Conference Calls
Monday: CPI International, Imperial Sugar, Smith & Wesson, Titan Machinery
Tuesday: AAR Corp., Adobe, Applied Signal Technology, Best Buy, FactSet, Goldman Sachs, Hovnanian
Wednesday: ConAgra, General Mills, Joy Global, Lindsay, Luby's, Morgan Stanley, Nike, Take-Two Interactive Software
Thursday: 3Com, Accenture, Carnival Corp., Discover Financial, Fedex, Lennar, Oracle, Pier 1, Quicksilver
Friday: CarMax, Darden Restaurants, Jabil Circuit, Stewart Enterprises

Economic Data

Monday
8:30 a.m. Dec. N.Y. Fed Manufacturing Index
9:00 a.m. Oct. Treasury International Capital Flows
9:00 a.m. Nov. Industrial Production
9:15 a.m. Nov. Capacity Utilization
1:00 p.m. Dec. NAHB Housing Market Index

Tuesday
7:45 a.m. ICSC Chain Store Sales
8:30 a.m. Nov. Consumer Price Index
8:30 a.m. Nov. CPI, Ex-Food & Energy
8:30 a.m. Nov. Housing Starts
8:55 p.m. Redbook Retail Sales

Wednesday
8:30 a.m. 3Q Current Account Balance

Thursday
8:30 a.m. Initial Jobless Claims
10:00 a.m. Nov. Conference Board Leading Indicators
10:00 a.m. Dec. Philadelphia Fed Business Index
10:00 a.m. DJ-BTMU Business Barometer

Friday
No major releases scheduled.

Quick Take

A look at how the industry's most popular ETFs did on Friday.