Markets broke a  two-week trend of gains to end the week down slightly, with the Dow down .74%, the S&P .42%, and the NASDAQ .25%. The markets did end the month up, however.  In fact, the February performance gain in the S&P 500 was the best February in 10 years.  For the year, though, the market is still down about 1%.

As expected, the markets did react strongly to Ben Bernanke’s comments Thursday.  However, an even stronger reaction was felt by the faltering commodity prices. Bernanke’s positive comments merely pared the losses related to commodities.

Next week should prove to be an interesting one.  We have more data on jobs, including the February unemployment rate, the ISM manufacturing and service numbers, and retail sales at the end of the week.  We expect the numbers will show us that the economy is recovering.