US stocks bounced back from their biggest weekly drop in three months with their largest one-day gain since January as a burst of merger activity and speculation propped up the market.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite, finishing up 1.5 per cent and 2 per cent, respectively, both had their largest advances since January 30, prompting a mild retreat for US Treasuries.

Propping up tech stocks was Nvidia agreeing on Monday to buy Israeli chipmaker Mellanox Technologies for $6.9bn. That helped trigger a rally in rival semiconductor companies, which countered some of the pessimism from late last week after Japan’s Renesas warned on slowing demand in China.

After starting in the red, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended 0.8 per cent higher. The blue-chip Dow’s early stumble was due to a sharp drop in Boeing shares, after one of the company’s 737 Max 8 jets operated by Ethiopian Airlines crashed on Sunday. Boeing finished 5.3 per cent lower.

The gains for the broader market follow five straight days of decline for the S&P 500 that were capped last Friday by a disappointing US jobs report. With investors in a more upbeat mood today, government bonds sold off, pushing yields higher. The yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury was up 1.6 basis points to 2.6411 per cent.

On the other side of the Atlantic, European banks bounced higher on speculation of a merger between German lenders Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank. That helped lift the broad Stoxx 600 off last week’s 12-session closing low.

The pound recovered from a three-week low as investors continued to watch the UK’s fraught Brexit politics. Sterling’s ability to hold the $1.30 level remained associated with a managed departure from the EU. In afternoon trade, it added 0.9 per cent over the session to $1.3139, having been as low as $1.2949 in early trade.

The strong pound weighed on the dollar, with the DXY index, which tracks the buck against a basket of global currencies including sterling, down 0.1 per cent at 97.176.