As the private sector added 168,000 new jobs in December, which is 13,000 more than expected in a Bloomberg poll of economists, it helped the stock market Friday, Jan. 4, according to Clark Yingst, chief market analyst of Joseph Gunnar, a full-service securities and investment banking firm.

Also supporting the stock market was that falling from the fiscal cliff has been put off for another two months, Yingst says. Taking a look at the sectors, nine of the 10 major industries in the Standard & Poor's 500 finished in the black Friday while only one was in the red. Specifically, technology was the only losing sector with a minus 0.72 percent, and Apple Computer/AAPL suffered a 2.79 percent drop.

Among Friday's top four performers are basic materials, financials, energy and industrials with gains ranging between 0.69 percent and 1.26 percent. On average, the gain of these sectors is 1.05 percent, which is more than more than twice the 0.49 percent advance in Standard & Poor's 500.