A 1% weekly gain in the S 500 would typically be cause for celebration, so you can imagine how excited investors were last week when the broad-market index soared 5.9%.

A number of factors helped drive the index higher last week, including strong corporate earnings reports, signals from the Federal Reserve that it could be done raising interest rates, and an October unemployment report that showed job growth slowing, fitting the narrative of a soft landing.

The S 500 is made up of 500 U.S.-based large-cap stocks. The biggest companies have the greatest impact on the index, and none was bigger last week than Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), which rose 7% on the week. That didn't make Microsoft the biggest gainer of any stock in the index, but because the tech giant has a market cap of nearly $3 trillion and the S 500 weights its components according to market cap, it had the greatest lift on the index.

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Source Fool.com