S&P 500 rises to another record Friday, heads for winning week

The S&P 500 rose to a new all-time intraday high on Friday, pacing for a weekly gain, following the release of the latest jobs report.

The broad market index was last up 0.7%, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.9%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 236 points, or 0.5%.

The three major averages remain on track for a winning week. The S&P 500 is up more than 1% week to date, while the Dow and Nasdaq have jumped more than 2% and around 2%, respectively.

The December jobs report showed nonfarm payrolls increasing by 50,000 last month, less than the 73,000 that economists polled by Dow Jones had estimated. That data, though slightly weaker than expected, showed a U.S. economy that’s still trudging along, with investors anticipating that growth will ramp up.

The unemployment rate inched down to 4.4%, while economists had forecast 4.5%. Traders took that as a sign that improvement in the economy would happen soon.

When taking together the jobs data with the JOLTs and ADP reports released this week, Anthony Saglimbene of Ameriprise Financial believes the consensus around the U.S. employment backdrop is that it has “softened” but “remaining firm,” reflecting a “low-hire, low-fire” environment.

“What could have been a risk is that you could have seen employment fall off a little bit more than expected, and I think that would have maybe kind of concerned investors,” the chief market strategist said. “We get through the week on the employment side with mostly as expected numbers, which I think is a positive.”