Surge in deals lifts stocks after last week’s slide

Wall Street kicked off the week with a broad rally Monday, clawing back much of the stock market’s losses from last week.

The S&P 500 rose 1.3%, led by gains in technology, health care and financial stocks. Small company stocks were among the biggest gainers. The rally reversed a big slice of the index’s 2.5% slide last week, when the S&P 500 posted its biggest weekly decline since June. Treasury yields were mostly higher.

The market’s strong start to the week is a reversal after a mostly downward shift in the market this month led by a sell-off in high-flying tech stocks that many analysts said was long overdue.

“We’ve been due for a little bit of a pullback, and we’ve experienced that so far in September,” said Terry Sandven, chief equity strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management. “We still have a positive outlook into the end of the year, but we believe market chop will be the norm.”

The S&P 500 gained 42.57 points to 3,383.54. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 327.69 points, or 1.2%, to 27,993.33. The Nasdaq, which includes many tech stocks, picked up 203.11 points, or 1.9%, to 11,056.65.

Several big corporate deals helped put investors in a buying mood Monday. Nvidia jumped 5.8% after announcing plans to buy fellow chipmaker Arm Holdings in a deal worth up to $40 billion. Oracle climbed 4.3% after the business software maker beat out Microsoft to become the “trusted technology provider” of TikTok, the popular video-sharing app based in China. And the stock of Immunomedics nearly doubled after the cancer drug specialist agreed to be acquired by Gilead Sciences in a $21 billion deal. Gilead shares rose 2.2%.

AstraZeneca added 0.5% following news over the weekend that clinical trials for its coronavirus vaccine will resume after being paused due to a reported side-effect in a patient in the U.K. The vaccine is seen as one of the strongest contenders among the dozens of coronavirus vaccines being tested.

Wall Street has been riding a surge in volatility the past couple of weeks as investors turned cautious after a five-month rally for stocks fueled largely by a run-up in big tech.

“We know that momentum is going to slow a little bit, that’s expected,” said Esty Dwek, head of global market strategy at Natixis Investment Managers. “It wasn’t supposed to be, or it was never going to be a straight line without any bumps in the road.”