The major US equity indices ended the final session of last week with timid gains, as a positive reading finally prevailed on the latest data released this morning on the US economy.

The Dow Jones and Nasdaq Composite ended Friday's session with gains of just under 0.1% at 37466 and 14524 points respectively, while the S&P500 gained almost 0.2% at just over 4697 points.

The US economy created 216,000 new non-farm jobs in December, where Jefferies, for example, was expecting only 185,000, but the previous months' creations were revised downwards for a balance of -71,000 in total.

The bottom line is that the labor market is still fairly robust, which reinforces our view that the US Federal Reserve will not cut interest rates as soon as the market has taken this on board", commented Commerzbank.

The picture of the US economy darkened during the morning, however, with the ISM services index coming in at 50.6 for last month, compared with 52.7 in November, even though economists were expecting a much smaller drop.

On the value side, Constellation Brands gained 2.1% after the alcoholic beverage group published its third-quarter results, accompanied by an increase in its free cash flow target range for fiscal 2023-24.

Costco Wholesale gained 1.2% following the announcement of a 9.9% increase in sales for the month of December, a point of activity that led Jefferies to raise its target price on the warehouse chain's stock.

On the other hand, Palantir shed 1.7% after Jefferies downgraded its recommendation to 'underperform', with a price target of $13, due to the artificial intelligence hype that has recently buoyed the stock.

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