US stocks had a strong day on Monday, the first trading day in December, with the Nasdaq and S&P 500 closing at fresh record highs, and the Dow dipping slightly.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was the only major Wall Street index to fall on Monday, dipping 0.3 percent to close at 44,782.00.

The S&P 500 rose 0.2 percent to close at a new record of 6,047.15, while the Nasdaq rose 1.0 percent to an all-time high of 19,403.95.

"From a technical standpoint, the market is still in very good shape," Jack Ablin from Cresset Capital told AFP. "And December also coincides with... a favourable seasonal trend as well."

"We're just getting back to a mega cap growth stocks again," Ablin said. "And it may be because investors don't expect rates to come down as quickly as they originally thought."

Ablin said the market was favouring those companies because they have "no debt or very little debt."

"And so when they think rates are going to stay high, then they want the companies that aren't borrowing much," he said.

Among individual stocks, Super Micro Computer surged 28.7 percent after a probe into an auditor's concerns about governance and transparency issues found "no evidence" of misconduct at the firm.

Another firm to rise was chip manufacturing equipment firm Applied Materials, which saw its share price rise by 4.9 percent. (AFP)