(Yahoo!Finance) - US stocks ended Friday's session higher as tech stocks led the way and helped the major indexes cap the first full week of trading in 2026 with gains across the board.
Friday's rally earned record closes for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) and the S&P 500 (^GSPC), and for the week, the Dow led the major indexes with a gain north of 2%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) rose just less than 2% for the week, and the S&P 500 rose about 1.6%.
Oil prices also climbed through the week as the market digested the US military's capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro last weekend and a large-scale seizure of the South American country's oil industry by the Trump administration.
Futures on international benchmark Brent crude oil (BZ=F) picked up more than 3.7% throughout the week, while futures on the US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (CL=F) gained roughly 2.6%.
Looking forward, data on consumer prices out Tuesday, along with producer prices and retail sales on Wednesday, will headline the economic calendar as traders watch for any signal of what the Federal Reserve may do at its meeting at the end of this month. Traders on Friday were pricing in 95% odds that the Fed will keep rates unchanged.
Earnings season will also get underway as the country's largest banks lead the pack. JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and BNY Mellon (BK) will report results on Tuesday, while Bank of America (BAC), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Citigroup (C) will report on Wednesday.
Other big names set to report in the week ahead include investment banking power Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS), as well as key chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) on Thursday.
The 2025 labor market slowdown
Friday's December jobs report offered investors the final piece of major labor market data for 2025.
And when the results were in, what we found was the worst year for US job growth outside of a recession since 2003.
Some 584,000 new jobs were added to the US economy last year, down from just over 2 million 2024, and the first time job gains were less than 1 million a year — with the exception of 2008, 2009, and 2020 — since 124,000 jobs were created in 2003.
As the market's reaction to Friday's jobs report suggests, however, there were fears that things would look even worse.
"Labor market conditions are cooling but hardly collapsing," wrote Neil Dutta, head of economic research at Renaissance Macro, in a note on Friday.
The unemployment rate stood at 4.4% in December, the lowest in four months. And if investors are focused on whether things are getting better or worse — rather than whether something is good or bad right now — the labor market is showing signs of the former heading into 2026.
But several experts on Friday, including Dutta, BlackRock's Rick Rieder, and Pantheon Macroeconomics' Samuel Tombs, all noted that the youth unemployment rate remains quite elevated, with unemployment among workers ages 16-24 now at 10.4%. That's up from 9% a year ago, and 8% in December 2023.
Couple this with the rise in unemployed workers looking for work for more than 27 weeks — this total rose to 1.95 million in December from 1.56 million a year ago and now accounts for a quarter of those unemployed — and dynamism is clearly lacking from the US labor market.
Call it a freeze in the LinkedIn Labor Market.
New entrants to the labor force, like college graduates and professionals looking, or forced to, make a change, are seeing fewer opportunities cross their desks. The US labor market has been described as "low hire, low fire" for some time, but as the fog of a three-month data delay starts to lift, Friday's jobs data offered numbers to make this meme a little more tangible.
"[While] U.S. growth is solid, broad-based labor is not really participating in this economic vitality," wrote Rick Rieder, BlackRock's CIO of global fixed income, in an email on Friday.
"One could take comfort in the fact that job cuts have been low, as displayed in the Challenger job cuts data, but with an economy that today is operating at such a strong level, it gives one pause to think about what the situation might look like if the economy began to slow and companies started actually making job cuts?"
Earnings arrive
When JPMorgan reports its fourth quarter results Tuesday morning, the latest earnings season will (un)officially be underway.
Big banks this week are expected to boast about a record year for the industry, and the second straight year their stocks collectively outperformed the market.
Data from FactSet published Friday showed that investors expect fourth quarter earnings to reveal annual profit growth at S&P 500 firms for the 10th straight quarter, with companies in the index collectively expected to report earnings rose 8.3% over the prior year to end 2025.
Among the index's 11 sectors, eight are expected to report earnings growth — only Industrials (XLI), Energy (XLE), and Consumer Discretionary (XLY).
In the year ahead, Wall Street expects more of this to come, with Bloomberg's Alexandra Semenova reporting in late December that every major strategist on the Street is bullish on the stock market this year. And most of these calls are underpinned by expectations for accelerated earnings growth.
"Expanding profit margins are expected to turn modest revenue growth into double-digit earnings growth, which should drive stock prices higher," wrote Yahoo Finance contributor and publisher of the stock market newsletter TKer, Sam Ro, back in December.
"The magnitude of those price gains will depend on whether or not valuations stay high."
We'll start to get a feel for the first part in the coming weeks. As for the latter part, investors can argue about it each day the market's open. And even those when it's not.
Economic and earnings calendar
Monday
Economic data: No notable economic data.
Earnings calendar: Wealthfront (WLTH)
Tuesday
Economic data: Consumer price index, month-on-month, December (+0.3% expected); Core CPI, month-on-month, December (+0.3% expected); CPI, year-on-year, December (+2.7% expected, +2.7% previously); Core CPI, year-on-year, December (+2.7% expected, +2.6% previously); Real average hourly earnings, year-on-year, December (+0.8% previously); New home sales, October (714,000 annualized rate expected)
Earnings calendar: JPMorgan Chase (JPM), BNY Mellon (BK), Delta Air Lines (DAL), Concentrix Corporation (CNXC), Phoenix Education Partners (PXED)
Wednesday
Economic data: MBA mortgage applications, week ended Jan. 9 (+0.3% previously); Retail sales, month-on-month, November (+0.4% expected, 0.0% previously); Retail sales, ex auto and gas, November (+0.3% expected, +0.5% previously); Producer price index, month-on-month, November (+0.3% expected); PPI ex-food and energy, month-on-month, November (+0.2% expected); Existing home sales, December (4.23 million annualized rate expected, 4.13 million previously); Business inventories, October (+0.2% previously)
Earnings calendar: Bank of America (BAC), Wells Fargo (WFC), Citigroup (C), Infosys (INFY), Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), Home Bancshares (HOMB), Platinum Group Metals (PLG)
Thursday
Economic data: Initial jobless claims, week ended Jan. 10 (208,000 previously); Continuing claims, week ended Jan. 3 (1.91 million previously); Import price index, month-on-month, November (-0.2% expected); Empire State manufacturing, January (1 expected, -3.9 previously); Philadelphia Fed business outlook, January (-2.9 expected, -10.2 previously)
Earnings calendar: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSM), Goldman Sachs (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS), BlackRock (BLK), JB Hunt Transport Services (JBHT), First Horizon Corporation (FHN)
Friday
Economic data: New York Fed Services Business Activity, January (-20.0 previously); Industrial production, month-on-month, December (+0.2% expected, +0.2% previously); Manufacturing production, December (0.0% previously); NAHB Housing market index, January (39 previously)
Earnings calendar: PNC Financial (PNC), State Street (STT), M&T Bank (MTB), Wipro (WIT), Regions Financial (RF), BOK Financial (BOKF)
By Jake Conley and Myles Udland
