The bulls returned to Wall Street on Friday after a brief hiatus. In the week ahead, investors from all camps will focus on a series of labor market reports for clues on where the U.S. economy and stock market may go from here. The S & P 500 , Nasdaq Composite and Dow Jones Industrial Average are coming off a volatile, holiday-shortened trading week. Despite a big and broad rally in Friday’s session, the major stock benchmarks all posted weekly losses. The S & P 500 and Nasdaq both lost 0.5%, while the 30-stock Dow dropped 0.6%. The S & P 500 and Nasdaq entered Friday on five-session losing streaks. The Dow had been on a four-day skid. The market was closed Wednesday for New Year’s Day. Sure, it’s now 2025, but “the same stocks that are good are still good,” Jim Cramer said on Friday’s Morning Meeting. He noted that the winners circle in 2024 once again included semiconductor companies such as Club holding Nvidia , our No. 1 portfolio performer last year. The artificial intelligence chip king also was among our top-performing stocks last week, with a 5.7% gain that trailed only oil-and-gas producer Coterra Energy and solar firm Nextracker , which both rose roughly 6.5%. We booked a nearly 1,000% profit when we trimmed some Nvidia shares on Thursday. 1. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote address at the annual CES conference in Las Vegas, set to begin at 9:30 p.m. ET on Monday , is one of the biggest events on the corporate calendar in the week ahead. “The scuttlebutt on the speech is that you’ve seen none of it,” Jim said. “A lot of emphasis, by the way, on total cost of ownership and the return that you get by buying his chips. I think that’s going to change the discussion” and quiet concerns about custom AI processors encroaching on Nvidia’s turf, he added. 2. The employment picture will command the spotlight on the economic front, starting Tuesday morning with the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for November. The closely watched reading, known as JOLTS, measures the tightness or slack in the labor market. Economists expect 7.7 million job openings in November, according to Dow Jones. That would be in line with the prior month. 3. The main jobs event of the week is Friday morning’s nonfarm payroll report for December. The consensus forecast is that the U.S. added 155,000 jobs in the final month of 2024 and the unemployment rate held steady at 4.2%, according to estimates compiled by Dow Jones. In November, nonfarm payrolls expanded by a better-than-expected 227,000 , while the unemployment rate matched forecasts. 4. Before Friday’s official government report, payroll processing firm ADP will release its look at private-sector job creation in the U.S. on Wednesday morning. The ADP report is expected to show that 130,000 jobs were added in December, per Dow Jones. Initial jobless claims also will be released Wednesday, a day earlier than normal, because Thursday is the national day of mourning for former President Jimmy Carter. The U.S….
Read More: Here are the 5 things we’re watching in the stock market in the week ahead
