Wall Street surged on Monday, with the Nasdaq up 2.5 percent and the S&P 500 up 2.1 percent in afternoon trading, extending Friday's recovery from last week's sharp sell-off as tech, airline and semiconductor shares led the gains.
Wall Street climbed sharply on Monday, with the technology-heavy Nasdaq leading a broad rebound as investors bought back into shares sold off heavily last week. In afternoon trading the Nasdaq was up 623.39 points, or 2.5 percent, at 25,202.82, while the S&P 500 had risen 152.24 points, or 2.1 percent, to 7,529.10 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 872.12 points, or 1.7 percent, at 52,157.85.
Technology shares set the pace. The NYSE Arca Networking Index jumped 7.3 percent and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose 7.1 percent, both extending Friday's recovery from seven-month lows. Airline stocks rose with the NYSE Arca Airline Index up 5.4 percent as crude oil fell nearly 3 percent, and gold, financial and retail shares also gained. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note stood at 4.872 percent. Overseas, Japan's Nikkei 225 rose 2.3 percent, Germany's DAX gained 1.6 percent, France's CAC 40 added 1.2 percent and Britain's FTSE 100 rose 0.9 percent, while South Korea's Kospi slipped 0.8 percent.
The rally extended a recovery that began on Friday after Thursday's rout, when the Nasdaq closed down 5.52 percent and the S&P 500 fell 4.36 percent. For last week as a whole the S&P 500 lost 2.7 percent, the Nasdaq 3.4 percent and the Dow 0.9 percent. The Senate voted 60-40 on Sunday night to advance a funding bill aimed at ending the 40-day government shutdown, and the prospect of the government reopening has steadied a market that has been trading without most official economic data.
The index levels come from the dpa-AFX wire's afternoon report and line up with Reuters' figures from the open, when the Dow stood at 51,826.25, the S&P 500 at 7,436.76 and the Nasdaq at 24,780.15. Two aggregator sites published far lower index levels for the same session that match neither wire and were left out of this account. The figures here are intraday readings, taken while trading was still under way, so the closing levels will differ. Nvidia ran against the rally, falling more than 5 percent after the chipmaker said it would investigate reports that chief executive Jensen Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence effort, a matter already reported in earlier coverage.
If the gains hold into the close, the market will have clawed back much of last week's losses in two sessions, with cheaper oil and the prospect of federal data resuming giving buyers two reasons to return. The next tests arrive quickly: the House still has to pass the funding bill, October consumer price data is due on Tuesday, and the Federal Reserve meets in December.