NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - With the war on Iraq, stocks have risen sharply. So has the noise level.

Never mind the rumors that fly through the futures and foreign exchange markets. Never mind the chatter from sources that need to be taken with a strong dose of doubt, like everyone's favorite these days, the Israeli-run DEBKAfile.

No, even if you could ignore these things (and Wall Street can't), with the beginning of war there has been a news glut. TV networks squaring off against each other, "embedded" reporters filing reports left and right, Pentagon sources this, intelligence sources that. Investors have more information on this war than they have ever had for any major world event.

That doesn't mean they feel they can make particularly well-informed investment decisions.

"At some point we'll get back to analyzing companies again," said Brett Gallagher, head of U.S. equities at Julius Baer. "But that hasn't been a good use of your time in the last few weeks."

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Still, traders are optimistic about stocks' prospects in the week ahead. On Friday, hopes that leadership of the Iraqi regime faced ouster -- particularly with the beginning of U.S. forces' "shock and awe" campaign against the country -- helped send the Dow Jones industrial average into positive territory for the year for the first time since late January. (Click here for a line-up of key events in the week ahead.)

Bollinger Capital Management head John Bollinger believes the rally, which has sent the Dow 13.3 percent higher in an eight-session streak, may still have legs to it. There are investors out there, professionals mostly, who are afraid that the rally will pass them by. They'll push their cash into stocks, pushing stocks higher.

"I think we're going to get the oh-my-god-I'm-not-on-the-train sort of rally," he said. "There's cash built up on the sidelines and people want to put it to work."

In fact, Gallagher, who views the market as overpriced, has already put himself on the train, going from an 8 percent cash position in the fund he runs to a 1 percent cash position a week ago. The reason? The market looked to him like it could pop higher. His fund was ahead of the benchmark S&P 500 for the year, and he didn't want to lose that outperformance.

Further, his analysis had shown that in the rallies that have peppered the market over the past three losing years, it was typically the sectors that had done worst ahead of the rally that bounced back the most. So he bought financials, telecom and basic material stocks.

"We'll rotate out of those at the first chance," he said. "In terms of price, we still think the market is very much overvalued."

Whether the rally can extend much longer depends on how the economy does in the months to come. The operating idea in the market is that with the first stages of war with Iraq having gone so smoothly for U.S. forces, much of investors' uncertainty has been washed away, giving them the courage to commit cash to the market.

And part of why many Wall Streeters are optimistic is that they think U.S. companies and consumers will have a similar response. With certainty, risk-aversion will fall away, purse-strings will be untied and the economic cycle will go from vicious to virtuous again.

Yet some feel that the economy still has a struggle ahead of it.

"While we will likely get some sort of euphoric reaction to military victory, after that we'll get back to the fundamentals of the economy, which are not strong," said Paul Kasriel, chief U.S. economist at Northern Trust. "You cannot get past the fact that people have suffered the worst decline in their net worth since the Great Depression and that this has a longer-term impact on spending."

Certainly, both businesses and consumers will breathe sighs of relief at the conclusion of war, but the job of repairing balance sheets and rebuilding savings will mean that it will take time before the United States can experience strong economic growth again.

• Tuesday the Conference Board puts out its consumer confidence index for March. With the worries over war, economists surveyed by Briefing.com think that the index slipped to a new nine-year low of 63 from February's 64.
• February existing home sales, due out Tuesday, are expected to come in at an annualized 5.85 million rate, down from January's record high of 6.09 million.
• Wednesday, February durable goods orders come out, with expectations of a drop-off of 1 percent after a 2.9 percent gain in January. Economists will be digging into the guts of the report to try and gauge how much companies are spending on new equipment.
• February new home sales come out Wednesday, with economists expecting a jump to an annualized rate of 928,000 from January's 914,000.
• The government's final take on fourth-quarter gross domestic product comes out Thursday. Economists expect it will show a 1.4 percent gain, even with the initial reading.
• Friday February personal income and spending figures get released. Expectations are that income gained 0.2 percent versus the 0.3 percent gain in January and that spending dropped 0.1 percent, equal to January's decline.
• The University of Michigan releases its final take on consumer sentiment from March on Friday. Economists think the sentiment index stayed at 75, even with the month's initial reading.