04:25 PM EST, 11/24/2025 (MT Newswires) -- US benchmark equity indexes closed higher for a second straight session amid a rally in Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) shares that helped lift technology stocks to kick off a holiday-shortened week.

The Nasdaq Composite rose 2.7% to 22,872 on Monday, while the S&P 500 advanced 1.6% to 6,705.1. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.4% to 46,448.3. All three indexes finished Friday's trading session higher.

US stock markets will be closed Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday and will shut down early at 1 pm ET Friday.

Among sectors, communication services paced the gainers Monday with a 3.9% jump, followed by tech's 2.5% surge. Only consumer staples and energy closed lower.

In company news, Alphabet's class A and C shares increased 6.3% each. The tech giant's Google Cloud unit said it signed a multi-million-dollar contract with the NATO Communication and Information Agency to deliver secure sovereign cloud capabilities.

On Friday, Alphabet's class A stock jumped 3.5% amid "renewed enthusiasm around its Gemini 3 artificial intelligence model and data center investment plans," Saxo Bank said in a report published Monday.

Broadcom ( AVGO ) was the best performer on the S&P 500 Monday, up 11%, as HSBC raised its price target on the chipmaker's stock to $535 from $400.

Tech stocks Western Digital ( WDC ) and Micron Technology ( MU ) followed Broadcom ( AVGO ) on the index as the top gainers.

Novo Nordisk's ( NVO ) US-listed shares tumbled 5.6% as the Danish pharmaceutical giant said that Alzheimer's trials using semaglutide failed to show a slowdown in disease progression.

The earnings season is largely over, with nearly 95% of S&P 500 companies having announced latest quarterly results. Earnings are up 13% on sales growth of 8.3%, Oppenheimer Asset Management said Monday. FactSet's bottom-up estimates put analysts' projected earnings growth at 8% ahead of the latest earnings season, according to the brokerage.

"S&P 500 earnings have persisted in surprising to the upside across most sectors for (third-quarter) earnings season," Oppenheimer Asset Management Chief Investment Strategist John Stoltzfus said.

US Treasury yields fell Monday, with the 10-year rate down 2.5 basis points at 4.04% and the two-year rate dropping 1.1 basis point to 3.50%.

The probability that the Federal Reserve will reduce its benchmark lending rate by 25 basis points next month jumped to 85% Monday from 71% Friday, according to the CME FedWatch tool.

Last week, New York Fed President John Williams said policymakers can afford to further cut interest rates to support a weakening labor market.

West Texas Intermediate crude oil rose 1.4% to $58.89 a barrel Monday.

US President Donald Trump said he had "a very good" telephone call with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, discussing soybeans and other topics.

"We have done a good, and very important, deal for our great farmers -- and it will only get better," Trump wrote in a Monday social media post.

Since the two leaders' recent meeting in South Korea, "there has been significant progress on both sides in keeping our agreements current and accurate," Trump said. "President Xi invited me to visit Beijing in April, which I accepted, and I reciprocated where he will be my guest for a state visit in the US later in the year."

Gold rose 1% to $4,119.20 per troy ounce, while silver added 2.1% to $50.97 per ounce.