Stocks finish at highest level in a month as Nasdaq leads with 2% gain

U.S. stocks finished at their highest level in a month on Monday as strong performances by consumer-technology giant Apple Inc.
AAPL,
+2.35%
and chipmaker NVIDIA Inc.
NVDA,
+7.59%
pushed the Nasdaq Composite
COMP,
+2.01%
further into the lead. The Nasdaq gained roughly 223 points, or 2%, to finish at around 11,364, bringing the tech-heavy index’s year-to-date gain to 8.6%, according to FactSet data. The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
+0.76%
gained 254 points, or 0.8%, to close at roughly 33,630. The S&P 500
SPX,
+1.19%
gained 47 points, or 1.2%, to 4,020. The Dow is up approximately 1.5% since the start of the year, while the S&P 500 is up roughly 4.7%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq has outperformed the other major U.S. indexes since the start of 2023, a reversal of the trend from 2022, when the value-heavy Dow outperformed the Nasdaq by the widest margin since 2000, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Investors await a batch of earnings from megacap technology stocks this week, including Microsoft Corp
MSFT,
+0.98%.