It’s the calm before the fury. Next week will be huge for the market as many big companies are reporting earnings.

Will we see forward momentum due to good earnings surprises or will we hit a brick wall? One thing is for sure; next week is shaping up to be very entertaining and pivotal.

Take a partial look at the slew of companies reporting earnings next week:

• 3M (NYSE: MMM)
• Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL)
• AT&T (NYSE: T)
• Bank of America (NYSE: BAC)
• Boeing (NYSE: BA)
• Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY)
• Broadcom (NASDAQ: BRCM)
• Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT)
• ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP)
• DuPont (NYSE: DD)
• Google (NASDAQ: GOOG)
• Halliburton (NYSE: HAL)
• JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ: JBLU
• McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD)
• Merc (NYSE: MRK)
• Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT)
• Pfizer (NYSE: PFE)
• Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM)
• Schering-Plough (NYSE: SGP)
• Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN)
• US Airways (NYSE: LCC)
• Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO)

And there are many other companies reporting earnings over the coming five trading days.

Many have predicted a solid upside in the stock market for the second half of this year. This week will give us a good indicator.

There also a lot more data coming out this week (home sales and new home sales data), including the June revisions of the Reuters / University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers report (Friday, July 27 according to Reuters’ site).