A sign of life: Wall Street gains ground after seven straight weeks of losses

Wall Street began gaining ground following seven straight weeks of losses. The S&P 500 rose 1.9%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 2% and the Nasdaq rose 1.6% Monday.

“The market is taking a little bit of a breather for several weeks of high levels of volatility and selling pressure,” Schwab Asset Manager, CEO and CIO Omar Aguilar said. “Investors seem to be a little more calm today and we’ve seen a little bit of rally on areas as companies and the economy starts to just get a little bit more stable and people are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, if you can actually say that.”

Banks and technology stocks made some of the strongest gains. Just before closing, Apple was up 3.4% and Microsoft was up 2.7%.

VMware surged 20.8% just before closing following a report that chipmaker Broadcom is offering to buy the cloud-computing company. JPMorgan Chase was up 6.9% before closing after giving investors an encouraging update on its financial forecasts.

Concerns about inflation have been weighing on the market and have kept major indexes in a slump recently. The S&P 500 is coming off its longest weekly losing streak since 2001.

“Today it would appear the market is less fearful over the inflation factor and the Fed being able to orchestrate a soft landing so to speak,” Chuck Carlson, chief executive officer at Horizon Investment Services said. However, that apparent lack of fear iover more Wall Street losses may not last.

“Volatility will continue,” Aguilar said. “It’s very hard to find the bottom or find to try even to try to time when the bottom will come. It’s something that we don’t advise anybody to try.”

On Wednesday, investors will get a more detailed glimpse into the Fed’s decision-making process with the release of minutes from the latest policy setting meeting.

Wall Street will also get a few economic updates this week from the Commerce Department. On Thursday it will release a report on first-quarter gross domestic product and on Friday it will release data on personal income and spending for April.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.