Barring new shocks, investors will turn their attention to U.S. economic data in the coming week, including the important March jobs report on Friday.

Stocks in the past week bounded higher, erasing much of the roughly 6 percent loss since late February, when investors began to trade on fears about Libya and broader Middle East unrest. The Dow was up 3 percent to 12,220, and the S&P 500 jumped 2.7 percent to 1313, while the Nasdaq and Russell 2000 were both up 3.7 percent for the week.

The dollar lost about 0.4 percent against the euro, but gained nearly a percent against the yen which began to reflect more concern about the condition of the Japanese economy following the earthquake and nuclear disaster. Oil added another 3.5 percent this week, ending at $105.40 per barrel.

"Actually, for the first time in a while, I think the U.S. data is going to be very important," said Jens Nordvig, global head of G-10 currency strategy at Nomura Securities. Nordvig said the market began to refocus for the first time in recent weeks on talk of when the Fed might end its extraordinary easing program. That speculation in part was prompted by comments from a series of Fed speakers Friday and an announcement by the Fed that it would start to hold media briefings four times a year.

Winston Davidian | Photodisc | Getty Images "The good news is the jobs market is improving. The bad news is there's still not a 300,000 number that tells you the trend shouldn't weaken," says Deutsche Bank Chief U.S. Economist Joseph LaVorgna.

There are more than a half dozen Fed officials speaking in the coming week, but the big focus is on the March employment report.

Economists expect that the March payrolls will show the economy added just about 200,000 new jobs, up slightly from 192,000 last month.

In the coming week, traders expect a positive bias in the stock market as investors make portfolio adjustments ahead of the end of the first quarter on Thursday. Besides the jobs report, auto sales are reported Friday, as is a key manufacturing survey from the Institute of Supply Management.

"I think it's kind of interesting that all the negative overhangs still seem to be there, but the market's been resilient, bouncing back pretty quickly," said Andrew Burkly, director of equity strategy research at Brown Brothers Harriman. Burkly does not expect the market's gains to be great this year, and he has been expecting the S&P 500 to criss-cross the 1300 level several times before ending the year at 1350.

"We've been using the third-year market as our base case and basically third-year bull markets are muted. They tend to be in the 3- to 5-percent range," he said.

Energy stocks and tech were the best performers of the week, up 4 percent. The energy sector has followed the nearly 15 percent rise in oil, and it is up about 14.7 percent for the year-to-date, double the next best performing industrial sector. Tech is up just 3.2 percent year-to-date.

Burkly said an area of concern for the market could become the outperformance of energy stocks, rising as oil's sharp move higher could start to pinch the economy and stock market. "The longer energy stays a dominant outperformer, I think that's going to weigh on the other groups as time goes by," he said. "There's too much dispersion. Not everything is participating."

The rising price of oil did not hold back stocks in the past week, but it is a top area of concern among analysts and economists.

"I think one of the things driving the market over the last couple months is the idea that the economic reports are coming in better than expected," said Burkly, noting this past week's durable goods report was a surprising negative. "If you start to see a trend where the numbers are disappointing, that could affect the market."

Goldman Sachs stock strategists, in a note Friday, said they believe investors are questioning the U.S. growth outlook due to the combination of macro event risk and a "soft patch" in economic data. "Growth worries have manifested themselves in recent equity performance. Growth-based investment strategies have paused after a five-month run of strong outperformance and we estimate equity investors reduced their view of US GDP growth by 40 bp from mid-February to mid-March," they noted.

But the Goldman strategists recommend keeping growth-sensitive stocks and they expect macro economic data this week to remain strong.

The stock market's spring back from its lows of the year on March 16 has been quick, even in the face of the conflict in Libya, Japan's problems and a budget and political crisis in Portugal. The S&P 500 was down 6.4 percent from its Feb. 18 peak through its March 16 trough, and it has rebounded 4.8 percent.