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New York - US stocks finished higher on Monday, keeping alive the positive momentum from last week's rally despite weakness in petroleum-linked shares.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 47.37 points (0.28%) to 17 131.86.
The broad-based S&P 500 rose 2.57 (0.13%) to 2 017.46, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index added 8.17 (0.17%) at 4 838.64.
Analysts said volume was light due to the Columbus Day holiday in the US, a government holiday that shut the treasury market.
The S&P 500 gained 3.26% last week to post its biggest weekly gain since December 2014.
"It's not very exciting," said Michael James, managing director at Wedbush Securities. "It's more about people digesting the pretty good move in the market last week that caught a lot of people by surprise."
Petroleum-linked stocks dropped following a big decline in oil prices. Dow member Chevron lost 0.9%, Schlumberger fell 1.9% and Apache dropped 3.3%.
Data-storage giant EMC rose 1.8% on news it will be acquired for $67bn by privately held Dell, which aims to position itself as a leader in cloud computing and other growing technology businesses
VMware, a cloud infrastructure company of which EMC holds about 80%, fell 8.1%. Dell said VMware would remain an independent, publicly-traded company.
Drugmaker Eli Lilly slumped 7.8% on news it has terminated a trial of its cardiovascular disease treatment evacetrapib for lack of effectiveness.
Airline stocks were higher, with American Airlines rising 3.4%, Delta Air Lines 2.7% and United Continental 3.8%. Delta is scheduled to report earnings on Wednesday.
Microblogging company Twitter fell 6.8%, giving back some of the gains since last Monday's announcement that interim head Jack Dorsey would stay on as chief executive. Twitter reportedly plans staff layoffs this week.
Other companies with larger gains included Chinese Internet giant Alibaba (+2.3%), Amazon (+1.9%) and Priceline (+2.6%).
A heavy earnings schedule this week includes reports from JPMorgan Chase and General Electric.
