NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - How much disappointment can the market take? Wall Street is about to find out.

Not that investors have been acting all that disappointed lately. Even after a swooning over the last two trading sessions, the S&P 500 just had its best weekly close since early January, and thus far is clocking its best year since 1999.

The reason for the market's nice tone, of course, is that investors expect good things in the offing. With the quick wrap-up to the war in Iraq, the veil of uncertainty that held back American consumers and companies has finally lifted, or so the optimists hope. This will lead to households and businesses going out and buying the things they have gone without, and this general loosening of the purse strings will lead to an economic revival.

Here's where the disappointment comes in.

Even if the optimists are right and the economy is going to hop higher, that improvement isn't likely to show up in the two big economic reports for April -- the Institute for Supply Management's Purchasing Managers' Index and the jobs report -- both of which are due out in the coming week. (Click here for a lineup of all the week's big events.)

In fact, economists' expectations for both reports are downright dour. According to the latest Reuters poll, they expect the PMI to come in at 47.3 Thursday morning, just a marginal improvement over March's 46.2. Any number under 50 indicates contraction in the manufacturing economy. Friday's jobs report is expected to show a rise in the unemployment rate to 5.9 percent from the current 5.8 percent, along with a 59,000-job drop in payrolls.

The problem? Part of it is that while these are "April" numbers, they don't necessarily reflect what things look like at the end of the month. As a result, they could still have plenty of that old war uncertainty in them.

The Institute for Supply Management, for instance, sends out its surveys to purchasing managers at the beginning of the month. Some people get right to them, which in this case would mean they were filling them out while the war was still on. Others put it off to the last minute.

Moreover, the PMI is very sensitive to energy prices. Although the price of oil has come down sharply, gasoline prices, which tend to lag, remain quite high. "The aftershock of the high oil prices we had over the winter is still in the system," said Credit Suisse First Boston economist Jay Feldman.

The jobs report is even more of a wartime indicator. It is based on surveys lasting from the week of March 12 to the week of April 12, points out Goldman Sachs economist Bill Dudley.

"It's going to take a while to ascertain what kind of bounce-back we're going to have -- these numbers [in the coming week] really aren't going to settle the issue," he said.

Given that, despite their April billing, the week ahead's big numbers won't give much of an indication of what the post-war economy looks like, the market should arguably look right past them. But for investors betting on a rebound, that may be a hard argument to swallow. Weeden strategist Steve Goldman points out that bullishness among investors appears to be on the rise, which means that stocks are vulnerable to bad news.

"We have a fragile market," he said, "and we're due for a pullback."

• The week ahead brings the last big raft of first-quarter earnings. Click here for the ones that matter most.
• The Commerce Department releases its March report on personal income and consumption Monday. It's considered a bit of a stale number (for traders, last month seems like a long time ago), but gains in the income section can be a decent predictor of future consumer demand. Economists polled by Reuters expect a 0.4 percent gain in income and a 0.7 percent gain in consumption.
• The employment cost index -- believed to be one of Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's favorite reports -- is due out Tuesday. For the first quarter, economists expect it climbed to 0.8 percent from 0.7 percent. This shows that there's still considerable slack in the labor market.
• Economists expect the April consumer confidence index, due out Wednesday, lifted to 68.7 from March's 62.5. Another sign that, with the closing of the war, the nation's mood has improved.
• Wednesday, the Chicago Purchasing Managers' Index, considered to be a good indicator of where the following day's national index is headed, comes out. Economists think it rose slightly in April, moving to 49.1 from 48.4.
• Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan speaks before the House Financial Services Committee Wednesday on monetary policy. Fed watchers will be poring over what he says to gauge the chances of a rate cut at the Federal Open Market Committee's May 6 meeting.
• Economists expect the government's report on first-quarter productivity, due out Thursday, to show a rise to 2.1 percent from the fourth-quarter's 0.8 percent.
• The Institute for Supply Management releases its Purchasing Managers' Index Thursday. Economists expect the key read on manufacturing rose only slightly for April, to 47.3 from March's 46.2.
• Throughout the day Thursday, car companies will report April sales. Expectations are they pushed higher.
• March construction spending, due out Thursday, is expected to show a 0.3 percent pickup coming back from February's 0.3 percent drop.
• Economists expect Friday's April employment report to be a downer. Payrolls are forecast to drop by 59,000, bringing the nation's job losses over the past three months to over a half million. The unemployment rate is expected to pick up from 5.8 percent to 5.9 percent.