Stocks came strongly out of the gate last Monday to kick off the 2010 Wall Street race. And indeed the market advanced throughout the week, albeit fitfully, with the S&P 500 starting the week at 1114 and closing at 1144. So let's recap last week's market data for some insight on where we should be looking to invest now.

As we close out a tumultuous year that took us from the depths of fear about the future of capitalism as we know it, to the heights of optimism, we enter 2010 with a cautious but hopeful view that the next shoe to drop—whatever it might be—will not lead to another maelstrom.

For the second year, we are publishing our "Baker's Dozen" Top Stocks for the coming year, selected by our powerful FSYS system.

Here are five stocks from the 2010 report:  JRCC, JOYG, CACC, HUM, STEC.

It seems that we needed only to take a week off to get this market going.  Our last issue was barely published when the market broke through the 1100 heavy resistance it had faced for nearly two months.  The S&P 500 closed today (Monday) at 1133, up a solid 3% since two weeks ago.  Small-cap Growth led the cap/styles this past week, up +1.66% while Large-cap Value was the worst at +0.32%.

Last week the market (S&P 500) battled resistance at the 1100 mark as if it were in the yawning sand trap at #14 on Pebble Beach – and Tiger Woods can't help us out just now.

It was yet another week of hanging around the1100 mark with the S&P500. It's not that there weren't important developments during the week. The trade deficit narrowed much more than expected, and retail sales got a substantial boost in November. Retailers alone sold $314.1 billion of goods, 1.4% more than in October and 2.2% more than a year earlier.

The market ended last week in a good mood, but is still struggling to gain enough traction for a sustained breakout beyond 1100 on the S&P500. The question in everyone’s mind:  Is it simply consolidating in preparation for a big Santa Claus rally? There are certainly plenty of market observers on both sides of the fence.

Black Friday was black in more ways than one, with a number of negative events. Still the market held up reasonably well.  Perhaps there’s nowhere else to get an acceptable return on one’s cash. At least the stock market has shown some strength, and valuations with a few exceptions are reasonable from a historic perspective.

I rather expected the market to be somewhat slow this week, waiting to see what would happen on Black Friday (traditionally initiating the period when retailers go from posting a loss to turning a profit). Instead, the market rose rapidly this morning, up nearly 2% in the first couple of hours. It later tailed off a bit but still closed as a very good day.

Since the unemployment release of 10.2% on November 6, virtually all economic releases have been modestly positive and the late reporting companies have had strong results (including revenues) and strong guidance.  So why has the market been going up and down on a daily basis over the past week?