US Market brief: May 21

Stocks struggled to stay in the positive territory to break a three session slide. After rolling in a zigzag fashion, today stocks closed higher. The S&P climbed 1.5%, Dow 1.2% and Nasdaq 1.1%. Volume rose on the both exchanges (NYSE and Nasdaq) .

Despite Friday's rebound, equities still finished lower on the week. The Nasdaq dropped 5%, S&P 500 4.2% and Dow 4%. Both indexes S&P 500 and Nasdaq undercut their May 6 Flash Crash low intraday in this week. Factors contributing to this week’s volatility were worries about Europe's debt crisis and the global economy potentially double-dipping back into recession, Fall of Euro, financial regulatory bill discussion in US Parliament.

However, on Friday the German Parliament approved the country's contribution to the 750 billion-euro bailout plan for euro-zone nations facing debt problems. The euro rebounded to $1.25, earlier in this week it touched to $1.21 low. Banks were strong on Friday despite the approval of financial regulatory bill by US senate lawmakers, placing new restrictions on the nation's biggest banks.

On the merger and acquisition front, Abbott Laboratories agreed to acquire the generics business of India’s Piramal Healthcare for a payment of $2.12 billion and payments of $400 million annually over the next four years.

The gold was trading lower at $1177 (-0.97%). And oil was trading lower at $69.84 (-1.36%).

Investors will be watching for the new home and existing home sales data, GDP data and visit of U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to Beijing in the next week.