Bargain-Hunters Boost Stocks

Updated from 4:08 p.m. EDT

Stocks in the U.S. closed firmly higher Monday as traders overcame their early tentativeness and looked for bargains in the wake of last week's selloff.

The major averages alternated between positive and negative territory before going to the upside for good around midday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 92.84 points, or 0.7%, to 13,358.31, and the S&P 500 added 14.96 points, or 1.03%, at 1473.91.

The Nasdaq Composite climbed 21.04 points, or 0.82%, to 2583.28, helped by gains of 2% or more in Applied Materials (AMAT Quote - Cramer on AMAT - Stock Picks), Sirius (SIRI Quote - Cramer on SIRI - Stock Picks), SanDisk (SNDK Quote - Cramer on SNDK - Stock Picks) and Qualcomm (QCOM Quote - Cramer on QCOM - Stock Picks).

For the bulls, who watched Thursday and Friday as mounting worries about the credit market crushed stock indices, the ascent was a welcome development. The Dow lost 208.10 points, or 1.54%, to 13,265.47 on the final day of trading last week -- a pullback that followed a decline of more than 300 points the day before.

Also last time out, the S&P 500 dropped 23.71 points to 1458.95, and the Nasdaq sank 37.10 points to 2562.24.

Paul Mendelsohn, chief investment strategist with Windham Financial, said that traders had to look to the charts for buy signals in the absence of any major news headlines.

"We're seeing a technical bounce just above the 200-day moving average, which is very normal," said Mendelsohn. "We're correcting some of Friday's excess decline, and I think that's all it is. Also, there's going to be a lot of volatility we'll see leading up to [this week's] jobs report. Now, the critical thing is that we see more buying instead of dropping down further."

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