YAHOO [BRIEFING.COM]: This was an incredibly strong week for the equity markets, with the S&P 500 jumping nearly 8%. This week's rally follows a 5% decline last week.

The week started with a strong relief rally on Monday, helped by news that European authorities were discussing the possibility for a new eurozone fiscal pact that could make budget discipline legally binding and enforceable by European authorities. The market held onto gains and finished with a 2.9% gain.

After a relatively uneventful Tuesday, stocks surged on Wednesday after major central banks announced coordinated liquidity actions. The S&P 500 jumped 4.4% after the Fed and five other central banks agreed to lower the pricing on the existing temporary U.S. dollar liquidity swap arrangements by 50 basis points to ease strains in financial markets and mitigate the effects of such strains on the supply of credit. Although these actions do not address the underlying solvency problems in Europe, they help to liquify the markets to help deal with the stresses that result from those solvency problems.

Prior to this coordinated action, equity futures had moved up after China eased policy by lowering its Reserve Requirement Ratio by 50 bps to 21.00%.

Thursday was uneventful, with mixed retailer Same Store Sales reports, but markets found an early bid on Friday ahead of the November Employment Report. That report turned out to be an encouraging read on the employment sector, with Nonfarm Payrolls coming in at +120K vs. the +123K Briefing.com consensus, and the Unemployment Rate falling to 8.6% vs. the 9.0% Briefing.com consensus and prior month's level. After moving higher off the open, equities reversed course and pared their early gains. The turnaround wasn't drastic, but did correlate with a decline in euro.

Outside of the macro news, there were some large individual movers as well this week on company news. Among the many stocks that had large gains this week, Zumiez (ZUMZ 28.99, +5.62) was an outperformer with a 39% gain on the week, helped by strong earnings/guidance on Friday. MBIA (MBI 10.62, +0.41) gained 40% on the week, helped by positive broker comments and S&P affirming its rating. Magma Design Automation (LAVA 7.16, +0.03) gained 37% on the week, after it was acquired by Synopsys (SNPS 27.44 -0.06) for $7.35/Magma share in cash.

As far as the losers go, Celsion (CLSN 2.18, +0.07) dropped 22% after announcing Monday that it received unanimous recommendation by independent data monitoring committee to continue and complete phase III heat study of Thermodox as planned. Retailers Gildan Activewear (GIL 16.99, +0.63), Talbots (TLB 1.54, -0.12) and Francesca's (FRAN 16.00, +0.64) fell 25%, 19% and 18%, respectively, on earnings and guidance.

Precious metals pared their strong overnight gains during U.S. trade and ended the session mixed. Gold managed to gain $9.60 and finish at $1749 per ounce while silver was unable to hold the flat line and shed $0.33 to close the day at $32.45 per ounce. Gold and silver were trading up as much as 1.6% and 3.0% respectively before the rally in the dollar wiped away their strong gains.

In the energy complex, crude oil prices settled with a gain of 0.7% at $100.94 after briefly slipping into negative territory before rallying into the close. Natural gas opened lower and trade sideways the entire session. The energy component finished down $0.06 at $3.58 per MMBtu.

Next week brings several central bank directives, including the ECB on Thursday, which will be of great interest given increased expectations for another rate cut. The Bank of England is also due out Thursday, but there is less uncertatinty there. Additionally, Germany's Merkel and France's Sarkozy are expected to meet on Monday, which could bring influential headlines with regard to Europe's debt crisis. The U.S. calendar lightens up a bit, but Monday brings Oct. Factory Orders and Nov. ISM Services, and Friday we get the Dec. Michigan Sentiment reading.DJ30 -0.61 NASDAQ +0.73 SP500 -0.30 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1518/1.61 bln/997 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1856/876.2 mln/1195