NEW YORK --- More volatility could be in store for stocks next week as investors grapple with less certainty about the economic outlook and a new blow to the financial sector after JPMorgan Chase's trading loss.

Europe is expected to keep investors jumpy as well, with inconclusive results from the recent Greek election and the country's future appearing more worrisome.

The economic picture appears cloudy these days, with some data showing a more positive trend and other reports showing the opposite. An index of consumer sentiment rose to its highest in a more than four years, but last week's jobs report showed another monthly decline in hiring.

Next week brings minutes from the last Federal Reserve meeting, which investors will look to for more guidance on whether the central bank plans to give additional help to the economy.

Stocks closed lower for a second straight week on Friday after a week of choppy trading. Strategists say that's likely to be the case again in days to come.

"Expect more volatility. We're still seeing this natural risk aversion. We expect any source of bad news to trigger a sell-off, but we're still not in a red-alert area," said Omar Aguilar, chief investment officer of equities for Charles Schwab in San Francisco.

"The good economy in the U.S. is leading the way, with the Federal Reserve being very accommodating."

Citigroup's chief U.S. equity strategist, Tobias Levkovich, said the market has likely begun a pullback, and that the Standard & Poor's 500 index could fall 5 percent to 7 percent from its April 2nd intraday high of 1,422.

"We're going to probably spend several months in kind of choppy trading," he said.

News that JPMorgan Chase & Co, the largest U.S. bank by assets, lost billions of dollar on bad trades raised fresh worries that the financial sector was not on the mend. The KBW bank index fell 1.2 percent for the day.

Chase CEO: We made a terrible, egregious mistake

There's likely to be more focus on the company next week. After the close of trading, Fitch Ratings cut JPMorgan's credit rating one notch and cited the bank's $2 billion trading loss, and Standard & Poor's revised its outlook of JPMorgan to negative.

The S&P financial index has lost ground since rallying 21.5 percent in the first quarter. The index is still up 13.6 percent since the start of the year.

Wall Street will scrutinize the minutes from the FOMC's late April meeting, which the Fed will release on Wednesday at around 2 p.m. Eastern time.

At that April 24-25 meeting, the FOMC repeated its expectation that interest rates would not rise until late 2014 at the earliest, and it took no action on monetary policy.

But Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spurred stock market gains when he told reporters on April 25 that "we remain entirely prepared to take additional balance-sheet actions as necessary to achieve our objectives. Those tools remained very much on the table and we would not hesitate to use them, should the economy require that additional support."

More focus may be on the Fed and economic data next week, with the first-quarter U.S. earnings period nearly done. Ninety percent of S&P 500 companies have already reported results.

Major retailers set to report earnings next week include Home Depot , a Dow component, and JC Penney Co., both on Tuesday, followed by Limited Brands, parent of Victoria's Secret, and discount chain Target Corp on Wednesday. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc, the world's largest retailer and a Dow component, is set to report earnings on Thursday before the opening bell.

The week's mostly closely watched economic indicators will include the U.S. Consumer Price Index and retail sales, both for April, on Tuesday, followed by April housing starts and April, industrial output and capacity utilization, all on Wednesday.

In Europe, problems with the Greek elections raised the risk of it exiting the euro zone.

"I think earnings and valuations are still very compelling. Unfortunately, what we're looking at on earnings and valuations is going to be overshadowed by the fact that we've got these global issues we're dealing with: Greece and France and their elections, and debt issues and the possible breakup of the euro," said Evan Nowack, managing director at HighTower's Leventhal Group in Bethesda, Maryland.

Technical charts indicate bearishness ahead.

"My 'bigger picture' view is that in the near or intermediate term, further downside is favored," said Chris Burba, short-term market technician at Standard & Poor's in New York.

S&P 500 charts are showing a "head-and-shoulders top," he said, noting that demand earlier this month was not strong enough to push the benchmark index above its April high.

He sees support just below 1,300, while resistance could come at 1,415 for the S&P 500.

"The outlook stays bearish unless you get above 1,415," Burba said.

CNBC's Tyler Mathisen looks ahead to what are likely to be next week's top business and financial stories.

Women on Wall Street who want to outearn their male counterparts should start shining shoes, according to a report.

Bloomberg News has crunched census data and found that female personal care and service workers -- including butlers, valets, house sitters and shoe shiners -- made $1.02 for every $1 that their male counterparts earned in 2010.

The job category was the only one of 265 major occupations where the median female salary exceeded the amount paid to men, according to Bloomberg.

The six job categories with the biggest gender gap were in the financial sector, including insurance agents, managers, clerks, securities sales agents, personal advisers and other specialists, according to the report.

Even women with advanced degrees were unable to achieve parity with their male counterparts. According to the article, women doctors made 63 cents for every $1 earned by male physicians and surgeons, while female chief executives earned 74 cents for every $1 made by their male counterparts.

Are women on Wall Street equal? Share your thoughts on Facebook.

By msnbc.com news services

These days, smart young professionals are heeding the advice of Horace Greely, the American newspaperman who famously advised: “Go West, young man.”

A recent poll found that 20 percent of them would want to start their careers at Google, while 13 percent would like to get started at Apple. Both companies are based in Silicon Valley, California.

For the youth of America, the icons of business have switched time zones. CNBC’s Jane Wells reports.

Where would you like to start your career? Let us know on our Facebook page.

By msnbc.com news services

U.S. stocks are set to move higher at Wednesday’s opening bell, following two days of sharp market losses, with developments in Greece and a U.S. monetary policy meeting in focus.

French and German leaders will aim to push for quick implementation of Athens' bailout deal after the Greek government unsettled global financial markets by calling for a referendum on a new rescue plan. The Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou won the backing of his cabinet to hold the referendum.

Papandreou's move triggered a slide in global stocks Tuesday. The Dow Jones industrial average closed the day down 297 points having seen a 321-point deficit at the session’s low.

Papandreou's unexpected call for a public vote on the rescue plan for Greece came just days before the leaders of the world's largest industrial and developing nations gather for the G20 economic summit in Cannes, France on Thursday and Friday. The troubled eurozone will be the summit's emergency topic.

A top European official warned that Athens could be left to go bankrupt if it went through with the vote and experts said the broader deal — which hopes to protect larger countries such as Italy from markets panic — could collapse.

Here's more on the crisis in Greece from CNBC:

The U.S. Federal Reserve looks set to take a breather from monetary stimulus measures on Wednesday, even if financial market turbulence heightens the chances of action later.

At 2:15 p.m. ET, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will hold a media briefing following a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on interest rate policy.

In economic news Wednesday, a report said U.S. private-sector employers added 110,000 jobs in October, beating economists' expectations, while another report showed the number of planned layoffs at U.S. firms dropped in October after hitting a more than 2-year high the month before.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Richard Drew / AP

Jonathan Corpina, left, works with fellow traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday. Stock prices fell sharply after Greece's Prime Minister George Papandreou said he would let its people vote on an European plan to rescue the Greek economy.

By msnbc.com news services

A wave of selling hit Wall Street and stock markets around the world Tuesday after Greece’s Prime Minister George Papandreou said he would let the Greek people vote on an unpopular European plan to rescue the nation’s economy.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed the day down 297 points having seen a 321-point deficit at the session’s low. As stocks tumbled, a widely-watched gauge of investor fear, the VIX index, jumped some 25 percent, chalking up its biggest daily gain since mid-August.

U.S. stocks briefly pared their losses after Greek lawmakers dissented from Papandreou’s plan, raising the possibility that Greece’s current government would not last until a confidence vote on Friday. But stocks sank again in afternoon trading after a report said the Greek government believes it will win the confidence vote plans to push ahead with its plan to hold a referendum.

“This was completely unanticipated,” said John Canally investment strategist and economist for LPL Financial in Boston. “This vote in Greece is going to hang over the market for next week or so, unfortunately.”

The prime minister of Greece said unexpectedly Monday that he would put the recently-formulated European rescue plan to a binding vote, the first referendum to be held in Greece since 1974.

The plan requires banks that hold Greek national bonds to accept 50 percent losses to help keep the Greek economy afloat. It also beefs up a European bailout fund and requires banks to strengthen their financial cushions.

International creditors have demanded that Greece enact painful tax increases and drastic cuts in public welfare programs, and Greeks have shown their hostility to those measures in violent protests and strikes.

If the European rescue falls through and Greece defaults on its debt, the ripple effect would be global. Europe could fall into recession, hurting a major market for American exports, and banks could severely restrict lending.

It was only last Thursday that European leaders announced a deal that they believed would be a turning point in the two-year debt crisis. Banks agreed to take bigger losses on Greek debt and to boost their levels of cash, while the European Union increased the size of its bailout fund. Global stock markets surged after the plan was unveiled. Now, those gains seem to be fleeting.

Greece could potentially face bankruptcy if the population ends up voting against the EU’s latest financial aid package in a referendum, the chairman of the Eurogroup countries said.

Jean-Claude Juncker said Tuesday the referendum decision had piled “great nervousness and insecurity” on top of an already highly insecure situation for the euro zone economy, telling RTL Radio:

“I cannot exclude that this would be the case, but it depends on how exactly the question is formulated and on what exactly the Greek people will vote on.” He added: “It is something that brings a great nervousness, that adds great insecurity to already great insecurity and therefore we need to see calmly how we will deal with this.”

Intense selling roiled markets in Europe Tuesday. Italy's main stock index dropped 6.8 percent. France's fell 5.4 percent and Germany's fell 5 percent.

The value of the dollar rose, and bond prices jumped so dramatically that analysts said they were stunned. Analysts also said the bond action reflected fears that the turmoil in Greece would tear at the fabric of Europe's financial system and create a crisis that could engulf the entire European Union, which together forms the world's largest economy.

On Monday, U.S. market sentiment was already turning sour after U.S. brokerage firm MF Global filed for bankruptcy amid reports that it had bought too much bad European debt and fears over the public finances of Italy, the euro zone's third-largest economy.

In Tuesday’s economic news, an industry report showed the pace of growth in the U.S. manufacturing sector unexpectedly slowed in October. As well as monitoring the turn of events in Europe, investors have a raft of economic news to digest this week, culminating in Friday's monthly jobs report.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

By msnbc.com news services

Wall Street looks set to follow European markets lower Tuesday, as investors fret over a surprise decision by the Greek Prime Minister to call a referendum on last week's new bailout package for the debt-stricken country.

George Papandreou shocked markets late Monday by announcing that a plebiscite will be held after a confidence vote in the government takes place at the end of this week. Should the government pass the Parliamentary hurdle, the referendum is expected to be held early in the new year.

Eurozone leaders agreed last week that private holders of Greek bonds should take a 50 percent loss on their holdings. News that Greece's Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos went to a clinic after suffering stomach pains added to the renewed bout of fears in the markets.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares fell 3 percent, while Germany's DAX slid 4.4 percent. The CAC-40 in France was 4.3 percent lower. Unsurprisingly, Greek shares fared worse, with the main exchange in Athens down 6.3 percent.

U.S. stock index futures indicate that Wall Street is poised for a second day of big falls Tuesday. On Monday, sentiment was already turning sour after U.S. brokerage firm MF Global filed for bankruptcy amid reports that it had bought too much bad European debt and fears over the public finances of Italy, the eurozone's third-largest economy.

As well as monitoring the turn of events in Europe, investors have a raft of economic news to digest this week, culminating in Friday's monthly jobs report.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

By msnbc.com news services

U.S. stocks fell sharply Monday as worries resurfaced about the European debt crisis. Bank stocks fell amid concerns about the broker MF Global, which filed for bankruptcy protection Monday.

The Dow Jones industrial average was lately down over 130 points. The decline comes after the Dow closed out its fifth week of gains last week, its longest winning streak since January.

Bank stocks dropped sharply in premarket trading after the New York Federal Reserve said it suspended MF Global Holdings from conducting new business as a Treasury bond dealer.

Trading in MF Global stock was halted. In premarket trading, Bank of America Corp. was down 2.3 percent. Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. dropped by more than 1.3 percent.

Shares of MF Global fell sharply after large investments in government bonds from European countries backfired. Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings have slashed the firm's credit rating to junk grade.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned Monday that European economies will see a "marked slowdown" next year. The organization called on the European Union to provide more information on how it plans to stem the debt crisis.

Last week, stock indexes jumped more than 3 percent Thursday after European leaders unveiled a plan to expand a regional bailout fund and made other steps to contain the debt crisis in Greece.

The S&P 500, the broadest stock market gauge, is up 13.6 percent in October. That puts it on track to have its best month since January 1987.

The European debt crisis is still far from fixed. One troubling sign is that borrowing costs for Italy and Spain have increased -- a signal that traders remain worried about their ability to pay their debts.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

By msnbc.com news services

Wall Street looks set to drop at Monday’s opening bell, as investors look to round off October will a bout of profit taking after four weeks of equities gains.

Stock index futures fell in lackluster volume before Monday’s open, following four weeks of equities gains. U.S. stocks closed out a fourth week of gains on Friday, with the S&P 500 on track for its best monthly performance in more than two decades.

In company news, troubled brokerage MF Global Holdings is near a deal to file for bankruptcy protection and sell assets to Interactive Brokers Group, the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times reported.

Groupon is considering raising its IPO price range as underwriters grow more confident about demand after completing the East Coast leg of a two-week roadshow to woo investors.

Japan sold the yen for the second time in less than three months after it hit another record high against the dollar, saying it intervened to counter speculative moves that were hurting the economy.

Reuters contributed to this report.

By msnbc.com news services

Wall Street moved higher Wednesday amid optimism about corporate earnings and a meeting of European leaders focused on tackling the region's debt crisis.

The Dow Jones industrial average jumped over 160 points at the start of trading, but had recently given up some of that early gain.

According to Reuters, Germany's Bundestag lower house of parliament has approved a motion to strengthen the euro zone rescue fund via leveraging on Wednesday, providing Chancellor Angela Merkel with the mandate she needs to negotiate at a key euro summit later in Brussels.

Corporate earnings are in high gear, with plane maker Boeing posting a larger quarterly profit. Also, Boeing's long-delayed 787 Dreamliner takes its first paying passengers later in the day.

Separately, Ford reported a lower third-quarter earnings, but beat estimates. Alan Mulally, Ford’s CEO, spoke with CNBC’s Phil LeBeau about the automaker’s earnings results Wednesday and the company’s plans for issuing a dividend to investors:

In economic news, the Commerce Department said sales of new U.S. homes rose in September after four straight monthly declines, largely because builders cut their prices. Separately, demand for a range of long- lasting U.S. manufactured goods rose more than expected in September to post the largest increase in six months, cementing views of a step-up in economic growth in the third quarter.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

By msnbc.com news services

Wall Street rallied at Friday’s opening bell as big U.S. companies reported solid third-quarter earnings.

The Dow Jones industrial average was lately up over 200 points.

Fast-food giant McDonald's Corp. said its profit rose 9 percent over last year, its ninth straight quarter of gains. Its results beat Wall Street's expectations. McDonald's shares surged 2.7 percent in early trading.

Industrial and financial conglomerate General Electric Co. said its net income rose 18 percent as its lending business continued to recover. Net income at software maker Microsoft Corp. rose 6 percent.

(Msnbc.com is a joint-venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal. GE holds minority interest in the latter.)

Earnings at both companies were in line with analysts' expectations. Their revenue beat Wall Street estimates. GE shares fell 1.3 percent in pre-market trading.

Traders are monitoring Europe's efforts to solve the Greek debt crisis. Worries about a default by Greece have caused much of the market's volatility in recent months.

Overseas stock markets appeared give European leaders the benefit of the doubt that they will agree on a package of measures in time for a summit scheduled tentatively for Wednesday.

Traders had hoped for a plan from a summit this weekend. But talks between France and Germany this week have broken down repeatedly. They said yesterday that there will be no deal before a second summit next week. The two countries disagree about the size of losses that private banks should take on Greek debt that they own, among other issues.

Traders sold ultra-safe U.S. Treasury debt overnight as riskier investments rallied. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.20 percent from 2.18 percent late Thursday. Bond yields rise as demand for them falls and their prices decline. That signals traders are demanding a higher return in exchange for holding an investment seen as safe.

Stocks have been lifted at times this week by modestly better news about the U.S. economy. The number of people claiming unemployment benefits declined this week. Housing construction picked up last month, at least for apartment buildings. Inflation remains low.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.