Another big week on Wall Street coming

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- With the Dow in uncharted territory and the early wave of earnings reports topping anemic forecasts, things are looking pretty good for the stock market. For now.

Longer term, questions about the strength of the economy, the direction of interest rates, the weakness of the dollar and a handful of other concerns could weigh as investors hit the seasonally weakest time of year: the summer.

But that's next month.

At least for the next week, there's plenty of reason to think that stocks can keep rising and that maybe the Dow can take out 13,000 - a number that has no real meaning, but could be a boon in terms of investor sentiment.

"It's just a number, but it does get people excited," said Timothy Ghriskey, chief investment officer at Solaris Asset Management.

Last week the Dow ended at record highs three sessions in a row, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both ended at more than 6-year highs.

Performance chasing in itself is likely to keep lifting stocks in the short run, said Paul Mendelsohn, chief investment strategist at Windham Financial Advisors.

"As the major gauges keep hitting these highs, people keep wanting to put money into the market,' he said. "People keep wanting to jump on the train, no matter fast its going."

Earnings are due from 35 percent of the S&P 500 next week, or 177 companies, including six Dow components. Standouts include Amazon.com (Charts, Fortune 500), Apple (Charts, Fortune 500), Boeing (Charts, Fortune 500), Exxon Mobil (Charts, Fortune 500), Ford Motor (Charts, Fortune 500) and Microsoft (Charts, Fortune 500). (See chart for details).

Although dominated by earnings, the week also brings its share of economic news, including reports on consumer confidence, new and existing home sales, the Fed's 'beige book' report on the economy and the first quarter gross domestic product growth report. (See chart for details).

"If housing is better than expected, if GDP hangs in at what appears to be a sustainable rate and the earnings news continues to be good, there is enough liquidity there to keep moving the market higher," Mendelsohn said.

The recent leg of the advance has marked a recovery from the big selloff in late February, and has indicated a tempering of some of the first-quarter worries about slowing global growth, the housing market and the subprime mortgage market meltdown.

However, most recently, the advance has been driven by the earnings, which have so far beaten tepid estimates.

Just a week ago, analysts were expecting S&P 500 earnings to grow 3.3 percent versus a year ago, according to Thomson Financial. But after the first big week of quarterly results, earnings are now on track to grow about 5.2 percent. However, only one-fourth of the S&P 500 has reported results as of yet.

So far, companies have really been blowing out the earnings expectations, Mendelsohn said. He said that corporation generally seem to be handling the uncertain economy by cutting back on spending and investment costs and are taking it to the bottom line instead.

However, "not only are the companies delivering, but everyone's expectations were so low that upside surprises were predictable, even more so than usual," he said.

Companies typically lowball estimates and, as a result, a greater percentage of earnings usually top forecasts versus the percentage that merely meet or miss expectations. But that's likely to be the case even more so this quarter, said David Dropsey, Thomson Financial research analyst.

Why? Roughly the same number of companies issued earnings warnings in the lead up to the earnings reporting period as usual, Dropsey said. But the difference was that far fewer companies issued positive pre-announcements this time, skewing the overall earnings estimates to seem more negative.

Companies were very cautious amid all the questions about the economy and the tough comparisons after several years of strong earnings growth, he said.

Because of all this, "it looked like this was finally the quarter where earnings were going to fall off," Dropsey said. But that hasn't proven true so far.

When all of the reports are out, earnings are likely to have grown between 7 and 8 percent for the quarter Dropsey said. That's none too shabby, but a slowdown after 14 quarters of double-digit percentage growth.

So far, second-quarter earnings estimates have not come out. Earnings for that quarter are currently on track to rise just 3.5 percent from a year ago, a figure that is likely to come down even more before the end of the quarter, Dropsey said.

Looking forward, he said, "the question is whether there's a true slowdown in corporate profits or is this just people being cautious because of the economy?"