Wall Street ends sharply higher; Nvidia, Palantir lead AI surge

STORY: Wall Street rallied on Monday, with the Dow gaining eight-tenths of a percent, the S&P 500 adding one-and-a-half percent and the Nasdaq climbing two-and-a-quarter percent.The longest government shutdown in U.S. history could end this week after a compromise that would restore federal funding cleared an initial Senate hurdle, though it was unclear when Congress would give final approval.Matt Stucky is chief portfolio manager for equities at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management."Markets are up today as a result of, you know, the government shutdown starting to come to an end. And I think a lot of investors look at that as just an era of uncertainty starting to lift from the markets, and any time uncertainty leaves the markets, you tend to see a favorable stock move. We're also in the midst of earnings season, which the third quarter has been remarkably strong carrying over from the strength that we saw in the second quarter. And so you put those things together, you'll continue strong earnings as well as some uncertainty being lifted with the government shutdown coming to an end, and you get a nice move in the markets higher."Heavyweight tech stocks rebounded from some recent losses, with shares of two AI-related powerhouses, chipmaker Nvidia and data analytics firm Palantir, climbing more than 5.5% and almost 9%, respectively.Among other movers, shares of Metsera slumped nearly 15% after the weight-loss drug developer accepted a sweetened offer from Pfizer to end a fierce bidding war between the pharma giant and Danish rival Novo Nordisk.And shares of Paramount Skydance rose in extended trading after the entertainment company, in its first post-merger earnings report, said it will make $1.5 billion in programming investments next year as it forecast fourth-quarter revenue above Wall Street estimates.