U.S. stocks saw modest gains on Monday, with the Dow and S&P 500 ending fractionally higher and the Nasdaq ending fractionally lower, as investors digested the latest comments from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and looked ahead to earnings reports from megacap American companies with a combined market value of around $20 trillion.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 114 points or 0.28%, while the S&P 500 index eked out a gain of 3 points, or 0.06%. The NASDAQ Composite index saw a small drop of 17 points, or 0.1%.

Trade hopes

Stocks were able to add to last week’s gains on hopes that the U.S. would start to announce some trade deals.

"There remains a lot of hope and hype about trade deals, and this might prevent a sharp slump in the SPX in the immediate term, but the index is at the top-end of its trading range and shouldn’t be chased beyond ~5500," Vital Knowledge analyst Adam Crisafulli said in morning’s note to clients. 

In an interview with CNBC on Monday, Secretary Bessent said many countries have offered ’very good’ tariff proposals to the U.S.

"We are continuing to make substantive movement on negotiations with many of our trading partners," Bessent stated. "The negotiations with our Asian trading partners are going very well; the negotiations with the Republic of Korea have gone very well; the VP’s negotiations with India went very well; and I think we’ve had some very substantial negotiations with our Japanese allies."

He also stated that all aspects of the U.S. government are in contact with China and that it is up to China to de-escalate the situation.

The Trump administration has shown signs of wanting to ease tensions in the ongoing trade war, which has rattled markets and fueled fears of a global recession. 

Earnings ahead: Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta 

Investors were eyeing earnings from the “magnificent seven” megacaps, including Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), and Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META), this week.

"The Q1 earnings season (and Q1 economic data) have been decent, but this is in part because the full effects of tariffs haven’t been felt – that will soon change," Crisafulli added. 

Microsoft and Meta are set to report on Wednesday, while Apple and Amazon are scheduled to report their earnings on Thursday.

These reports are key to gauging corporate resilience amid ongoing tariff tensions and capital expenditure worries around AI.

Earnings from other major sectors, like Visa (NYSE:V), Coca-Cola Co (NYSE:KO), and Caterpillar Inc (NYSE:CAT), were all due this week.

(Ayushman Ojha, Senad Karaahmetovic and Sam Boughedda contributed to this article).