04:44 PM EST, 01/09/2026 (MT Newswires) -- US equity indexes rose this week amid improving market breadth and expectations that the December nonfarm payrolls will embolden calls for more monetary policy easing than is currently priced.

* The S&P 500 closed at 6,966.28 on Friday versus 6,858.47 a week ago. The Nasdaq Composite stood at about 23,671.35 compared with 23,235.63 a week earlier. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended at 49,504.07, versus 48,382.39 at the end of last week.

* Basic materials, consumer cyclicals, industrials, communication services, and health care were among the top gainers this week. Technology also ended higher, while the utilities sector was the sole decliner.

* Venezuela's geopolitical crisis helped lift shares of companies in the energy sector while failing to hit risk sentiment in broader equities.

* The BLS December employment report showed nonfarm payrolls rose by 50,000, below the 70,000-job increase expected in a survey compiled by Bloomberg.

* Nonfarm payrolls excluding health care since April have been down by about 354,000, Derek Holt, head of capital market economics at Scotiabank, said in a note. "Take health sector hiring out of the picture, and there isn't much else."

* "The Federal Open Market Committee should, therefore, view the full employment side of its dual mandate as under more pressure than the inflation side for now," Holt said. "That should motivate a cut [in] January given the Congressional mandate, even if it's a plug-your-nose-on-moral-hazard cut by potentially emboldening other aggressive policies."

* The BLS data showed the unemployment rate fell to 4.4% in December from 4.5% in November, compared with expectations for in-line.

* "We are seeing a productivity revolution of extraordinary proportions," Rick Rieder, BlackRock's chief investment officer of global fixed income, said in an interview on Bloomberg TV, while concurring on the narrow breadth of nonfarm payrolls.