The upward slog will not be easy, especially given the not-so-hot earnings that are being reported. From the WSJ:

"The numbers we're seeing are pretty scary," said Ashwani Kaul, research director at Thomson Reuters, which tracks earnings trends. "If there's any silver lining it may be that things won't get much worse than this," with a profit rise possible in the fourth quarter largely because of dismal year-ago performance. As it stands, the market is likely to register its fifth straight period of declining earnings once all third-quarter reports are in hand. The consensus expectation is that aggregate profits at S&P 500 companies will be down about 10%, according to Thomson Reuters data.

The good news is that the credit situation continues to improve. Calculated Risk is doing a daily summary of the important measurements:

The yield on 3 month treasuries: 1.09% up from 0.93% (BETTER) A good sign would be if the daily volatility subsides, and the yield moves up closer to the Fed funds rate, or about 1.25%.

The TED spread: 2.74 down from 3.04 yesterday (BETTER)

The two year swap spread from Bloomberg: 102.25 down from 111.5 (BETTER)

The A2P2 spread is 4.18 for Monday, down from 4.36 on Friday. BETTER. This is the spread between high and low quality 30 day nonfinancial commercial paper. During a recession, this spread usually increases because the risk of default for lower quality paper increases. However the recent values (over 400 bps) are far in excess of normal. If the credit crisis eases, I'd expect a significant decline in this spread.