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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Investors module countenance to joint profits and outlooks this hebdomad for commendation the S&P 500 has added handicap to its feat as the earnings flavour gets low way.

Dow component Alcoa module start the earnings flavour after the closing bell on Monday in what is cod to be added solidified ammo of joint results.

The metal shaper is cod to inform quarterly earnings of 27 cents per care on revenue of $6.07 billion, according to Thomson Reuters estimates.

Some crowning business obloquy are also cod to inform this week, including JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) and Bank of USA Corp (BAC.N). Google Inc (GOOG.O) is also cod to report.

"Earnings are what the mart is every about. Earnings are grave in here, guidance is grave in here, the conference calls are grave in here," said Paul Mendelsohn, honcho assets contriver at Windham Financial Services in Charlotte, Vermont.

"In cost of earnings and sectors, you basically poverty to be with those people who impact the knowledge to improve prices or are participating in the artefact toll increases," he said. "And you rattling don't poverty to be in those people who impact the signaling costs increases and are going to see their margins squeezed by rising artefact prices.

Market analysts impact institute encouragement for a strong earnings flavour from the relatively reddened amount of consort preannouncements, leading to the belief that surging artefact costs impact still to wedge margins and effect joint profits.

The Reuters/Jefferies CRB finger rose 8 proportionality in the first quarter, is up 2.6 proportionality so farther in April, and impact its maximal take since Sept 2008.

The S&P 500 (.SPX) has recouped every of the losses suffered in the consequence of the Asian earthquake on March 11, but has been unable to convincingly hooligan time the 1,333.58 level, a theoretical status saucer representing double the 12-year low impact on March 9, 2009.

The criterion finger was relatively flat for the week, downbound 0.3 percent, as the individual of a polity shutdown kept the feat at bay.

Investors had braced for a doable polity shutdown as the White House and legislature scrambled on weekday to break a budget standstill aweigh of a midnight deadline

President Barack Obama's Democrats and opposition Republicans united late on weekday to cut $38 1000000000 in spending for the terminal sextet months of this business year.

The deal, which still must be approved by legislature this week, prevented a shutdown that would impact idled 800,000 federal workers, winking national parks and monuments and delayed paychecks for personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But analysts said that patch a U.S. polity shutdown would impact been short-term negative, the mart managed to feat modify aweigh of the looming deadline.

Many traders circled short-term puts on the SPDR S&P 500 Trust (SPY.P) .

Shares of the exchange-traded fund, also called the Spyders, slid 0.3 proportionality to $132.86 in salutation trading on Friday. The fund's Weekly $133 puts traded more than 96,000 contracts, superior their unstoppered interest.

Frederic Ruffy, a contriver at WhatsTrading.com, said the positions likely reflected hedges against imperfectness cod to fears of a shutdown.

Investors module also eye a batch of scheme accumulation this week, providing more brainwave into the scheme recovery, including the consumer and shaper prices indexes, the Reuters/University of Newmarket consumer sentiment finger and the Federal Reserve's Beige Book of scheme activity.

"The inflation numbers module sure be important -- shaper toll finger and consumer toll finger -- the belief is inflation module be higher than the Federal Reserve module feel comfortable with," said Hugh Johnson, honcho assets officer of Hugh Johnson Advisors LLC in Albany, New York.

"The pore (this) hebdomad module clearly be on the earnings numbers and the scheme numbers and that is where the pore of the mart should be."

(Additional news by Doris Frankel; Editing by Leslie Adler and Maureen Bavdek)

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