Even amid a broad recovery in the US dollar, major US stock indexes managed to gain on Monday.
This was helped by positive financial and industrial stocks after several banks reported better-than-expected first-quarter earnings.
Meanwhile, a jump in manufacturing activity in New York for the first time in 5 months helped reinforce the view that the US economy is still growing well.
Markets are now in wait-and-see mode for more corporate earnings ahead and the Federal Reserve (Fed) policy meeting in 2 weeks.
At the close of the New York session, the Dow Jones Industrial gained 0.3% to 33,987.19, while the S&P 500 added 0.33% to 4,151.31 and the Nasdaq rose to 13,087.71.
The US30 index was also higher around 33,978 in the Asian session.
Within the S&P 500 sector, financials rose 1.1%, industrials rose 0.8% while the underweight real estate group jumped 2.2%.
This week, reports from Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Bank of America Corp and Morgan Stanley will be released which could be a driving force for the stocks.
Heavyweight stocks including JP Morgan Chase & Co rose last week after being supported by higher interest payments in its earnings.
Johnson & Johnson, Tesla Inc and Netflix Inc are among the companies also in the spotlight for the publication of this week's report.
