Stocks started the week on a positive note as oil prices continued to slide on hopes that the U.S. and Iran will agree to end hostilities at this week’s United Nations General Assembly. Several mega-cap tech stocks also posted big gains, fueling upside for the broader market Monday.
At the close, the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.7% at 52,048 and the broader S&P 500 was 1.5% higher at 7,764. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite gained 2.3% to 27,122 — a new record closing high.
Front-month West Texas Intermediate crude futures slumped 4.5% to $95.78 per barrel and are now down nearly 10% from their September 15 peak near $106.
Sign up for Kiplinger’s Free Newsletters
Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and more – straight to your e-mail.
Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice – straight to your e-mail.
This comes after President Donald Trump told Fox News on Sunday that he would “probably” be open to meeting with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian at this week’s U.N. meeting in New York.
“The news raised optimism that a possible truce could incrementally restore traffic through the critical Strait of Hormuz,” explains José Torres, senior economist at Interactive Brokers.
Looking for more timely stock market news to help gauge the health of your portfolio? Sign up for Closing Bell, our free newsletter that’s delivered straight to your inbox at the close of each trading day.
President Trump is also scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington, D.C., this week.
Wall Street is “looking for news on any agreements that may reduce tariffs or improve access to critical minerals,” says Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets. “Any positive developments on that front could lift equities, particularly those in technology, industrial and consumer stocks. The flipside is that a breakdown in talks could revive trade-war concerns and market volatility.”
Technology was one of the best-performing S&P 500 sectors Monday, second only to communication services stocks. Chipmakers, in particular, saw big gains.
Intel (INTC), for one, jumped 12.1%, extending a rally that started last week on reports the company is in talks with SK Hynix (SKHY, +0.7%) to make chips in the United States.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) gained 10.0%, briefly topping a $1 trillion market cap for the first time and bringing its daily win streak to five, while Arm Holdings (ARM) surged 17.2% to its highest close since mid-July.
According to Barron’s, the rally in all three semiconductor stocks appears to be linked to the initial success of Meta Platforms‘ (META) artificial intelligence (AI) agent Muse, which could lift demand for the chipmakers’ central processing units (CPUs).
“Muse is Meta’s most consequential consumer product since the launch of Glasses in 2023, and an important revenue driver over time, in our view,” says Truist Securities analyst Youssef Squali. “It is the centerpiece of CEO [Mark] Zuckerberg’s quest to democratize ‘personal superintelligence’ and the clearest attempt yet to build a non-ad revenue stream to complement its ad juggernaut and show ROI against its large CapEx.”
META, meanwhile, jumped 11.4% Monday, marking the Magnificent 7 stock‘s best day since April 9, 2025.
Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery make merger headway
Elsewhere, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) rose 10.8% on reports that Paramount Skydance (PSKY, -2.9%) spent the weekend in discussions with several states that have sued to block its acquisition of WBD on antitrust concerns.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the parties are exploring a number of concessions, including a $1.5 billion investment in domestic production from Paramount and the sale of several cable channels.
Paramount agreed in February to buy Warner Bros. for $110.9 billion, including debt.