Nvidia and Big Tech rally to help Wall Street recover most of last week's drop

Nvidia was by far the strongest force lifting the market and rallied 4.8%. It's a bounceback after Nvidia and other winners in the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology were at the center of last week’s drop. Critics say their stock prices shot too high and too fast in the mania around AI, drawing comparisons to the 2000 dot-com bubble that ultimately burst.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which makes chips for Nvidia and other companies, saw its stock that trades in United States rise 3.1% after reporting that its revenue climbed nearly 17% in October from a year earlier. While such growth is strong compared with other companies, it’s a slowdown from TSMC’s earlier performance.

Another AI darling, Palantir Technologies, jumped 8.9% for the biggest gain in the S&P 500. That helped it recover some of its loss since it delivered a profit report last week that topped analysts' expectations.

Losses for health insurers helped keep the market's gains in check, though. They fell as uncertainty remains about whether Washington will extend expiring health care tax credits, a sticking point on Capitol Hill that's created the longest-ever shutdown for the U.S. government.

That's even as the Senate took the first steps on Sunday to end the shutdown.

President Donald Trump suggested in a social media post over the weekend that cash being sent to “money sucking” insurance companies should instead go directly to people so they can buy their own health insurance.

Humana fell 3.3%, Elevance Health sank 3.8% and Centene dropped 7.6%.

The effects of the government's shutdown have become more apparent following the cancellations of thousands of flights over the weekend. Towers are facing shortages as some air traffic controllers — unpaid for weeks — have stopped showing up for work.

Besides the pain at airports, the U.S. government’s shutdown has also delayed important reports on the economy. A resumption could upset financial markets if the released logjam shows data that dashes traders’ expectations for coming cuts to interest rates.

The wide expectation is for the Federal Reserve to continue cutting its main interest rate in hopes of shoring up what has been a slowing job market. Wall Street loves lower interest rates because they can give the economy a boost while also pushing prices for investments upward.

But the Fed has said it may have to halt its cuts if inflation worsens because lower interest rates can give inflation more fuel.

Without updates from the U.S. government on jobs and the economy, traders have instead been trawling profit reports from companies for clues about how things are going.

Tyson Foods climbed 1.6% after the seller of chicken and other proteins reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It benefited from increases in prices for its pork and beef of 11% to 17%.

Roughly four out of every five companies in the S&P 500 that have reported their results for the summer have also topped analysts' profit expectations so far, according to FactSet. Companies usually beat analysts’ estimates each quarter, but the pressure was high this time around because they needed to justify the big moves upward for their stock prices since April.

Delivering bigger profits is one of the easier ways companies can quiet criticism that their stock prices have become too expensive.

Companies have also been giving generally strong forecasts for upcoming results, according to Bank of America strategist Savita Subramanian. That has analysts' expectations for earnings in 2026 nearly all the way back to where they were before Trump shocked financial markets with his “Liberation Day” announcement of worldwide tariffs in April.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rallied across much of Europe and Asia.

South Korea’s Kospi jumped 3% for one of the bigger gains. Chip company SK Hynix, which is cooperating with Nvidia on artificial intelligence, leaped 4.5%. Its bigger rival, Samsung Electronics, climbed 2.8%.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 4.10% from 4.11% late Friday.

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.