As far as non-US markets are concerned, returns ranged from top performers -- mostly African countries -- Sri Lanka (+10.7%), Kenya (+9.5%), Namibia (+8.5%), Uganda (+7.3) and Côte d'Ivoire (+5.0%), to Russia (-9.8%), Qatar (-9.8%), Argentina (-8.4%), Ukraine (-6.9%) and Finland (-6.8%), which experienced headwinds.

In a bullish move, the Shanghai Composite Index -- one of the leading markets in the advance over the last few months -- bucked the downtrend with a gain of 5.0%. However, the Russian Trading System Index -- the top-performer for the year to date (+70.7%) and since the November 20 lows (+104.8%) -- succumbed to profit-taking, losing 9.8% on the week. Also, the Bombay Sensex 30 Index (-4.7%) declined after rising for 14 consecutive weeks. (Click here to access a complete list of global stock market movements, as supplied by Emerginvest.)

John Nyaradi (Wall Street Sector Selector) reports that as far as exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are concerned, the leaders for the week included offshore “short” funds such as ProShares Short MSCI Emerging Markets (EUM) (+7.4%) and ProShares Short MSCI EAFE (Europe, Australia, Far East) (EFZ) (+3.3%). On the other side of the performance spectrum, losers centered in the energy sector, including Market Vectors Coal (KOL) (-13.4%) and iShares Dow Jones US Oil Equipment & Services (IEZ) (-11.6%).

In a white paper released on Tuesday night, the Obama administration detailed a number of proposals to overhaul the US system of financial regulations in an effort to restrain the reckless risk-taking that triggered the economic crisis.

The quote du jour this week is related to this regulatory reform and comes from Barry Ritholtz, editor of The Big Picture blog and author of Bailout Nation -- a newly published and must-read book -- who remarked:

“The Federal Reserve, despite its role in causing the crisis, gets MORE authority. Under Greenspan, the Fed did a terrible job of overseeing banking, maintaining lending standards, etc. Why they should be rewarded for this failure with more responsibility is hard to fathom. It is yet another example of rewarding the incompetent.”

Ritholtz offers a better solution: “Have the Fed set monetary policy. They should provide advice to someone else -- like the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) -- who hasn’t shown gross incompetence.”

Other news is that the US Treasury is planning to revamp securitization with new rules designed to reduce the incentive for lenders to originate bad loans and flip them on to investors. The aim is to restore confidence in and revitalize securitized markets, which financed more than half of all credit in the US in the years immediately prior to the credit crisis.

Back to the stock markets: An analysis of the moving averages of the major US indices shows the S&P 500, the NASDAQ Composite, and the Russell 2000 trading above their 50- and 200-day moving averages, albeit marginally so in the case of the S&P 500. On the other hand, the Dow Industrial and Dow Transportation are below the key 200-day line, but still a few points above the 50-day average. Only the NASDAQ Composite trades above its January peak. The levels from where the rally commenced on March 9 should hold in order for base formations to remain in force.