Stocks rose Monday as Wall Street looked to a key artificial intelligence conference and awaited new monetary policy guidance from the Federal Reserve.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 75.66 points, or 0.2%, to settle at 38,790.43. The S&P 500 gained 32.33 points, or 0.63%, to finish at 5,149.42, while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.82% to end at 16,103.45.
Nvidia shares gained 0.7% on the first day of the company's GTC Conference — where the chipmaker is expected to showcase its latest inroads in artificial intelligence. Analysts hiked up their price targets as the conference began, with Truist's William Stein predicting 34% upside. Shares had climbed as high as 4% on Monday morning.
Shares of Alphabet ended 4.6% higher after Bloomberg News reported that Apple was in talks with Google to include the company's Gemini AI in iPhones.
These moves come after two weeks of tech-led losses for both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has ended the past three weeks with losses.
"Today's flavor is a rotation into tech," said Jay Hatfield, founder and CEO of Infracap. "We're in this seasonally weak period and people don't know really what to do, so they're kind of alternating between selling tech and selling the rest of the market."
Hatfield expects the market rally to take off again meaningfully come April, when the next earnings season begins.
Investors are also eagerly anticipating the Federal Reserve's policy meeting this week. The two-day policy Federal Open Market Committee meeting kicks off Tuesday and ends with an announcement Wednesday.
According to the CME FedWatch Tool, Fed funds futures are currently pricing in a 99% likelihood that the Fed will leave benchmark interest rates unchanged this week. However, the expectation for a June cut has ticked down in recent days to about 55%.
A hotter-than-expected February core and wholesale inflation reading frustrated equities and sparked anxiety that the central bank may be partial toward higher interest rates for longer before its policy meeting begins.