Dow, Nasdaq Close Higher As Stocks Move Up In Final Hour

(RTTNews) - U.S. stocks closed modestly higher on Monday thanks to some hectic buying at several counters in the final hour of the day's session amid hopes major banks and top ranking companies will come out with fairly encouraging earnings updates this week.

Stocks were largely subdued for most part of the session till the final hour amid concerns about economic slowdown and uncertainty about the outlook for interest rates.

The major averages all ended in positive territory after spending much of the day's session in the red.

The Dow ended up by 100.71 points or 0.3 percent at 33,987.18. The S&P 500 climbed 13.68 points or 0.33 percent to 4,151.32, while the Nasdaq ended higher by 34.26 points or 0.28 percent at 12,157.72.

Concerns about a potential recession later this year, and uncertainty about interest rates weighed on sentiment.

The President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Thomas Barkin said today that he wants to see more evidence of inflation settling back to target.

Barkin also said that he feels reassured by what he is seeing in the banking sector.

In economic news, a report from the National Association of Home Builders said the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market index in the US increased to 45 in April of 2023, rising for a fourth month in a row. This is a fresh high since September of 2022.

Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley are scheduled to announce their quarterly earnings during the course of this week.

Results are also due from Netflix, J&J and Tesla this week.

Shares of Charles Schwab Corporation surged about 4 percent after the company reported stronger than expected first-quarter earnings.

Prometheus Biosciences soared 70 percent after Merck announced that it would acquire the biosciences company for approximately $10.8 billion.

Alphabet shares ended 2.6% down on reports Samsung is considering replacing Google with Microsoft's Bing as the default search engine on its devices.

Travelers Companies, Boeing, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Salesforce.com, Home Depot, 3M and Intel ended notably higher.

Amgen, Chevron, IBM, Cisco Systems and Merck ended with moderate losses.

In overseas trading, Asian markets ended mostly higher amid optimism about Chinese economic growth. European stocks failed to hold early gains and ended mixed as traders looked for direction.