Wall Street ends higher following 7 straight weeks of losses

Stocks closed broadly higher Monday, an upbeat start to the week on Wall Street after seven weeks of declines that nearly ended the bull market that began in March 2020, the Associated Press reported.

The S&P 500 rose 1.9%, with technology and financial sector stocks doing much of the heavy lifting for the benchmark index. The Dow Industrial Average rose 2% and the Nasdaq climbed 1.6%.

The S&P 500 gained 72.39 points to 3,973.75. The Dow added 618.34 points to 31,880.24, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq picked up 180.66 points to 11,535.27.

Smaller company stocks also staged a rally. The Russell 2000 rose 19.50 points, or 1.1%, to 1,792.76.

Lingering concerns about inflation have been weighing on the market and have kept major indexes in a slump. The benchmark S&P 500 is coming off its longest weekly losing streak since the dot-com bubble was deflating in 2001. It came close to falling 20% from its peak earlier this year, which would put the index at the heart of most workers’ 401(k) accounts into a bear market.