US stocks ended mostly higher on Monday, led by gains in the Nasdaq and chipmakers as investors sought bargains after Friday's sharp selloff.

Investors were also relieved after Iran and Israel said they had halted attacks on each other. The halt followed an appeal from US President Donald Trump that they immediately "stop shooting." The attacks over 24 hours were the most direct confrontation between Iran and Israel since an April ceasefire in the war.

The Dow ended lower and stocks overall closed off the day's highs. Apple shares eased late and finished 1.9 percent lower even as the company unveiled a series of AI upgrades to Siri.

S&P 500 technology led sector advancers, rising 1.5 percent, and the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor Index jumped 5.6 percent, rebounding from Friday's losses that wiped out US$1 trillion in market value for US-listed chipmakers.

Intel shares gained 11.2 percent after news website the Information reported that Alphabet's Google had placed an order to manufacture more than 3 million tensor processing units in 2028.

"Today looks like a day where investors are doing a little bit of bargain hunting off the big tech selloff," said Rick Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments, a family investment office in New Vernon, New Jersey. "What normally happens after that is you get analysts coming in and reiterating buys."

He added: "This market has been priced for quite a while for perfection, and these are certainly imperfect times. In that environment, you are going to see some back-and-forth, and some fear of prices having gone too far."

Stocks sold off on Friday after hitting a series of record highs recently. Underwhelming results from chipmaker Broadcom last week had raised concerns that the chip sector was growing too fast, while much stronger than expected jobs data for May contributed to Friday's rout, as traders priced in interest rate increases this year. Broadcom gained 2.8 percent.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 80 points, or 0.2 percent, to 50,786, the S&P 500 gained 21 points, or 0.3 percent, to 7,405 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 220 points, or 0.9 percent, to 25,929.

Apple announced the Siri revamp at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference at its Cupertino, California, headquarters. Investors may be having a "sell-on-the-news" response, said Bruce Zaro, managing director at Granite Wealth Management in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

"Perception has been for quite some time that Apple had been behind the curve as far as their AI offerings. That's why the stock widely underperformed many of the other big techs for some time until recently," he said. (Reuters)



Edited by Cecil Wong