Stocks opened lower Monday but the main indexes found their footing by lunchtime and rallied into the close. Technology stocks helped lead the charge, with Autodesk (ADSK) surging on activist investor news. The software maker was hardly the day's only big gainer, though, with several semiconductor stocks notching significant wins.
At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.5% at 38,778 and the S&P 500 was 0.8% higher at 5,473. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite outperformed, gaining 1.0% to 17,857 as several large- and mega-cap stocks popped.
