Earnings to keep investors hopping

By Jeremy Gaunt, European Investment Correspondent

LONDON (Reuters) - Corporate earnings reports and economic news, both likely to be mixed, will keep financial markets in a fragile mood next week despite a surprisingly robust equity market performance over the past few days.

Britain's second-quarter gross domestic product -- the first from any G7 country -- comes out on Friday and should give a taste of the depth of the recession and possibly how far the industrial world has to go to get out of it.

There are also some concerns about the vulnerability of the bond market, the ability of central banks to withdraw from their liquidity-flush policies and even the possibility of ripples from financial trouble in the Gulf.

But it is the continuing earnings season that will grab most investors' attention.

Some of the results to date have been so pleasing to stock investors that MSCI's main world stock index was toying on Friday with its third or fourth highest weekly gain in its more than 20-year history.

This was down to solid performances from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Intel.

But there have also been some disappointments, notably Google and General Electric. Citi had a good headline figure but set off some worries about rising credit losses.

"We are past concerns about the whole financial system imploding," said Julian Chillingworth, chief investment officer of UK investor Rathbones.