The second quarter has started with a bang as equities, commodities and other riskier assets have soared. Now come some big tests. First, US companies begin a new earnings reporting season in the coming week and investors will be watching to see not just how the companies have done - probably pretty well - but how things might shape up in the quarters to come.
That is not nearly as clear.
Second, the International Monetary Fund-World Bank spring meeting should provide a steady stream of updates on the real strength of the world economy, its inflationary pressures and general financial stability.
One key for investors, a week after the European Central Bank raised interest rates, will be to glean how much things have "normalised", prompting more policymakers to accelerate the removal of cheap money. For the time being, however, financial markets are embracing risky assets with something akin to passion.
World stocks as measured by MSCI hit a fresh 33-month high on Friday, riding out worries ranging from Japan's costly earthquake and Portugal seeking a debt bailout to the threat of the budget-less US government shutting down.
Emerging market stocks, laggards for much of the first quarter, have been particularly hot, rising as much as 11.6 percent from a March 17 low. Some of this has been due to increasing investor confidence that growth and inflationary pressure in key emerging economies such as China are being controlled, as exemplified by China's rate hike during the past week.
A test of this will come on Friday, when Chinese first quarter GDP and inflation numbers are due.
MSCI's all-country world stock index has actually risen 103 percent since its financial crisis low in March 2009 - partly prompted by a string of sterling corporate earnings seasons. The question now is whether these are about to peak.
The latest season kicks of in the United States in the coming week with a test of three key sectors - industrial production from aluminium giant ALCOA, financials from investment bank J. P Morgan Chase and internet bellwether Google. Overall, the US reporting season is expected to be reasonable. Thomson Reuters Proprietary Research projects first quarter earnings to have risen 11.5 percent year-on-year.
This compares, however, to a 37.2 percent increase in the fourth quarter of last year. In a similar vein, UK private bank Coutts told its clients in the past week that US profit margins may have reached their peak.
It is looking for a squeeze from rising input costs. The price of Brent crude oil, as one example, has risen more than 30 percent so far this year. The price of oil and other commodities, meanwhile, have begin to worry central banks - epitomised by the ECB's hike in the past week, its first since 2008.
The IMF/World Bank spring meeting should provide updates, as will a G20 fringe meeting of finance ministers and a summit of leaders from Brazil, Russia, India and China, in China. Investors will be looking for any sign that world monetary policy - both the quantitative easing money-printing from the developed world and the unorthodox quantitative tightening credit curbs designed as a response in many emerging economies - needs to normalise and tighten up from here.