America' s trade deficit showed a bigger-than-expected improvement in February as the politically sensitive imbalance with China dropped to the lowest level in nearly a year. The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that the deficit fell to $65.7 billion, a 4.2 percent decline from January's record imbalance of $68.7 billion. Even with the improvement, the February trade gap was the third highest on record and the deficit for the first two months of this year is running 13.5 percent above the pace in early 2005, a year when the U.S. deficit hit an all-time high of $723.6 billion.

The labor market has shown solid gains in recent months. New claims for U.S. jobless aid rose an unexpectedly large 12,000 2 weeks ago, government data showed, but underlying measures of the labor market continued to show robust conditions Government data indicated the economy was growing at a slower pace, raising investors' hopes that moderating economic growth might halt the Federal Reserve's streak of interest rate hikes. Consumers will pay 11% more for gasoline this summer than a year ago, the government predicted Tuesday, while offering hope that prices will be lower than they are now at the peak of the summer driving season. The price of a gallon of regular gasoline will average $2.62, up 25 cents from last year and up more than $1 from the summer of 2003, the Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the Energy Department, said in its annual summer gasoline outlook. If realized, the average summer gasoline price would be the highest on record, not adjusted for inflation. The EIA defines summer as April through September, so the average price reflects six months of prices.

The Easter holiday shortened work week left the major indices little changed for the week, with the Dow gaining 0.2%, the S&P 500 retreating 0.5% and the NASDAQ losing 0.6%. Closed-end country funds performance mirrored the major indices. Of 49 such funds tracked by Thomson Financial, 20 finished the week with positive price changes, 27 dropped in prices while 1 remained unchanged. The average fund gained 0.35% in market price, compared to 1.54% from the previous week. The average discount of market price from net asset value per share further declined to 0.078% from the prior week's 2.70%.

Last week' s top 3 performers and losers all originated from the Far East. Rounding out the top performers for the week were the Indonesia Fund, Thai Capital Fund, and Greater China Fund which rose 15.79%, 8.81%, and 7.3% respectively.