After weeks of speculation, the financial damage from the Chile earthquake and Windstorm Xynthia in Europe is starting to emerge. According to a recent report by Moody's, 16 global reinsurance companies have reported their net insured losses (before taxes) from the catastrophe event, and the damage has already reached $3.5 billion, increasing an already high tally. The firm expects these events to have a noticeable impact on first quarter results for the industry.

According to the report, the first quarter of 2010's results "will have many moving pieces, including the possibility of favorable loss reserve development." It continues, though, that "we would expect a number of reinsurers to post both operating and net losses for the quarter."

Gordon Manning, technical analyst at National Australia Bank Ltd, foresees oil rallying to $88 per barrel.

Technical traders use support and resistance chart points to plot their trades. Resistance is an upside barrier that must be penetrated for prices to go higher. Support is a base line that must be breached for prices to go lower. Each day trader uses various formulas to calculate support and resistance for that day. Chartists do the same but for longer periods.

If you watched the price action of oil futures you noticed that prices are fluctuating between $80 and $83 per barrel. The first line of resistance then is at $83. If prices moved upward, through $83, then traders will look for the next level of resistance. In this case Manning sees that as the $88 level.

If FedEx can still be considered a bellwether for the U.S. economy, then judging by the expectations of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters, things must be looking pretty bright. But then again, the expectations for this week's quarterly reports from Nike, GameStop, and Discover tell a different story.

Memphis-based FedEx Corp. (FDX), announced an increase in ground rates and also delivered two pandas from the U.S. to China with its new Boeing 777F during its fiscal third quarter. Earnings for that period are expected to have more than doubled from a year ago to $0.72 per share. And revenue for the three months that ended in February is expected to have risen 2.4% to $8.3 billion. Analysts so far expect sequential and year-over-year growth of EPS and revenue in the fourth quarter. FedEx only fell short of earnings estimates in one of the past five quarters.

Despite harsh weather in many parts of the country, retail sales rose 0.3% in February. Sales, excluding autos, rose 0.8%. Retail sales were expected to fall 0.2%.

Ten of 13 categories showed improvement. Here are some data:

• Purchases of electronics rose 3.7%
• Receipts at bars and restaurants grew 0.9%
• Auto sales dropped 2%. Some attribute the Toyota recall to some of this drop.

Devan Kaloo, of Aberdeen Asset Management foresees a 15% drop for stocks of developing countries. His fund is investing in the developing countries of Mexico, India and Turkey. He is neutral on Brazil and underweight on Russia.

He is holding fewer Chinese stocks because he feels that stock valuations in China are overdone. The $586 billion stimulus package is due to run out this year. The helped the Shanghai Composite Index to rise 80% last year. This year to date the index is down 6.4%.

Most investors understand the relationship between job growth and the U.S. economy: For a sustained U.S. economic expansion to occur, there must be job growth.

Further, politically, the responsibility for lowering unemployment rests with the party in power -- President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats. That's how the American political system works. It doesn't matter whether the problem started on your watch -- if you hold the office, you're responsible at election time. End of discussion.

Abbey Joseph Cohen, chief market strategist at Goldman Sachs (GS), says that U.S. stocks have room to run on the upside. She spoke on CNBC Tuesday and reiterated this important fact: "The stock market is almost always a discounting mechanism that almost always moves in advance of the economy, but we don't think it has moved too far at this point."

This bit of wisdom should be posted at the top of every trader and investor's computer screen. Many investors have a tendency to look back at what happened, rather than looking forward to what will be. The past is dead. Today's trading is done. Now you must move on to tomorrow, to the unknown.