Dow Rides Tech Higher on Deal Activity

By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com – The Dow made a strong start to the week Monday as tech clawed back some of its losses following its worst weekly slump since March, buoyed by acquisitions activity.  

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.12%, or 311 points. The S&P 500 was up 1.28%, while the Nasdaq Composite added 1.71%.

Tech attempted to put its rocky end to last week in the rear view mirror as deal activity lifted sentiment on the sector.

Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) jumped 5% as the company appears to be at the front of the queue to partner with ByteDance's TikTok business in the U.S. ByteDance reportedly said it prefers to partner, rather than sell, TikTok's U.S. business, rejecting an offer from Microsoft Corporation.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin confirmed the Trump administration has received the proposal offer from Oracle for TikTok ahead of a deadline this week.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) remained 1% higher, while other names making up the Fab 5, which accounts for 25% of the S&P 500, also traded higher. Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), and Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) were also up, with the latter rising more than 2%.

In chip stocks, Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) rallied 5% after it announced a multi-billion acquisition of chip licensing company ARM holdings. The company also received a price upgrade from Jefferies (NYSE:JEF) to a street-high $680 from $570.

Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) also pushed chip stocks higher, rising 6% after Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) upgraded the stock to buy from neutral, citing strong management execution.

Nikola Corp (NASDAQ:NKLA) pared some of its losses from last week, rising 9%, as the electric pickup maker continued to hit back at allegations of fraud published in a report last week from short-seller Hindenburg.

"The report was designed to provide a false impression to investors and to negatively manipulate the market in order to financially benefit short sellers, including Hindenburg itself," Nikola said in a statement.