Stocks rebound after tough week

Stocks shrugged off a wobbly start to finish solidly higher on Wall Street Monday, as the market clawed back half its losses from last week.

The S&P 500 rose 1.5% after having been down 0.3%. The market rallied after a much healthier-than-expected report on the housing market put investors in a buying mood. Technology, industrial and communications stocks accounted for much of the market’s broad gains. European stocks also closed higher. Treasury yields were mixed and oil prices rose.

Gains for Boeing and Apple in particular helped to lift Wall Street indexes. Boeing jumped 14.4%, its best day in more than two months. The company’s troubled 737 Max jet looks set to begin test flights soon. Apple added 2.3% as customers keep buying its products regardless of whether they’re quarantined.

The pickup in U.S. stocks after a weekly loss marks the latest choppy move for markets around the world, which have been swinging back and forth in recent weeks as investors balance hope for a relatively quick economic rebound as more businesses reopen against worry as an increase in confirmed new coronavirus cases forces some businesses to close their doors again.

“It’s just another day of normal volatility, its unfortunately what we’re living with now,” said Mark Litzerman, head of global portfolio management at Wells Fargo Investment Institute. “It tends to be this tug of war between better economic data coming through versus a rise in cases.”

The S&P 500 gained 44.19 points to 3,053.24. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 580.25 points, or 2.3%, to 25,595.80. The Nasdaq composite added 116.93 points, or 1.2%, to 9,874.15.

Stocks of smaller companies also jumped more than the rest of the market, which often happens when investors are feeling more optimistic about the economy. The Russell 2000 index of small-cap stocks picked up 42.43 points, or 3.1%, to 1,421.21. The index made up for all of its loss from last week.

A rise in infections of the new coronavirus, including in the U.S. South and West, has dented the optimism that earlier sent the S&P 500 screaming nearly all the way back to the record it reached in February.