For now, stocks don't want to fall

On the surface, Friday's close looked like nothing happened in the stock market.

Except that the major averages finished higher for a second week in a row. And that interest rates moved a touch lower. And that energy and precious metals futures moved slightly lower.

For the month, U.S. stocks are higher. That's due in part to economic reports that haven't been scary. Earnings reports so far look OK; we'll know a lot more in the next weeks.

The bottom line about the market is that there's a lot of money that doesn't believe a significant pullback is in the offing. Not yet anyway. So the market's resilience, a reality for the last few months, continues.

The Dow Jones industrials ($INDU) finished up a very modest 17 points to 13,488. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index ($INX) was down less than a tenth of a point to 1,472. That means the index is still effectively at a 5-year high. The Nasdaq Composite Index ($COMPX) added 4 points to 3,126.

It may sound loopy to say the market doesn't want to go down. What about the debt ceiling crisis? Clearly investors (or the computers that drive so many of today's buy/sell decisions) think a deal will be struck.

The major averages are trading 3% to 5% above their 200-day, 50-day and 20-day moving averages. Those are signals of investor confidence. The 14-day relative strength index for the averages are below 70. That also suggests the market isn't getting ahead of itself.

For the week, the Dow and S&P 500 rose 0.4%. The Nasdaq added 0.8. For the month, the Dow is up 2.9%. The S&P 500 has climbed 3.2%, and the Nasdaq has risen 3.8%.

Crude oil (-CL) fell 26 cents to $93.56 on Friday and was up 0.5% for the week. Gold (-GC)  fell $17.40 to $1,660.60 an ounce. Gold was up 0.7% for the week.

Platinum (-PL) slipped $3.10 an ounce to $1,631.20. But it was up 4.7% for the week as some traders took the talk about minting a $1 trillion platinum coin to contain the federal deficit seriously.

The 10-year Treasury yield fell to 1.875% from Thursday's 1.894% and 1.915% a week ago.

Some stocks made some interesting moves. Among the gainers: Facebook (FB); Best Buy (BBY), the S&P 500's top performer; Union Pacific (UNP), Netflix (NFLX) and Coach (COH).

Boeing (BA) was the most visible laggard because of its issues with the 787 Dreamliner. The stock fell 3.3% on the week to $75.16. Perrigo (PRGO) was the weakest S&P 500 stock, down $6.38 to $103.85. Goldman Sachs downgraded the maker of over-the-counter health-care products, saying sales growth is likely to slow in the next few months.

Next week's earnings include Big Bank reports -- JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS) -- as well as numbers from Intel (INTC) and General Electric (GE).

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