Oil and Soap Lubricate the Dow

It was a quiet week across the financial and economic frequencies, with Wall Street entirely silenced on Friday in deference to Ronald Reagan's funeral. Oil prices, causing a grating racket in the ears of investors for weeks, settled back below $39 a barrel, momentarily soothing the stock market. The Dow industrials added 167 points, or 1.6%, to reach 10,410. The Standard & Poor's 500 index climbed nearly 14 points, or 1.2%, to finish at 1136. The Nasdaq gained 21, or 1.1%, to pull a few decimal points above 1999. In the preannouncement month of March, the number of companies warning of profit shortfalls was exactly equal to those raising or confirming their forecasts. This suggests that second-quarter earnings are possibly "in the bag," with little chance of broad disappointments. In other news, talk of mergers - real and hypothetical, large and small, hostile and friendly - has started crackling more loudly in the markets lately.