The Dow and the S&P 500 posted modest gains. The Nasdaq outperformed by far with a 263-point surge.

Video conferencing provider Zoom jumped nearly 9 percent as many states decide whether to reinstate stay-at-home orders. Also benefitting, large-cap tech stocks like Amazon, which was at the top of Monday's gainers.

Ladenburg Thalmann Asset Management CEO Phil Blancato is advising investors to book profits from these high-flying, growth tech stocks and put money to work in other sectors.

"When you get an opportunity to take away some profits and rotate to where - think of the mindset - we can rotate to some of those big value names; those core economy names - think Costco, Caterpillar, maybe some cyclicals, the reason why: they are still cheaper and if we are closer to the end of this, let's assume one of these vaccines work, and we begin to open up at a faster rate in the fall, then you're going to really benefit by beginning your rotation now."

Early data from three potential vaccine candidates raised hopes on Monday. British drugmaker AstraZeneca in conjunction with Oxford University, China's CanSino and a partnership between Pfizer and Germany's BioNtech are all developing vaccines that showed promising signs in human clinical trials. With these competitors seeing success, investors knocked shares of Moderna down by almost 13 percent.

Chevron is buying oil and gas producer Noble Energy for about $5 billion in stock, giving it a greater presence in the shale market. This is the first deal in the energy sector since prices crashed earlier this year. Shares of Chevron fell, while Noble moved higher.