Shares of technology companies recouped some of their losses from a three-day slide.
"U.S. stocks are rising today because the bloodbath with technology stocks had to stop," said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at foreign-exchange brokerage OANDA Group.
"The Nasdaq intially led the charge higher as most of the FAANG stocks rebound and many of the smaller cloud and software companies make a big comeback."
Shares of some big tech companies remained highly volatile.
Shares of Tesla tested their lows of the year, falling by roughly 5% to under $560, after Chief Executive Elon Musk abandoned a short-lived policy to accept bitcoin as payment for vehicles.
The price of the digital currency plummeted from over $55,000 to around $48,0000 after Mr. Musk reversed the policy through an announcement on Twitter. Outrage among cryptocurrency enthusiasts who follow the car executive on Twitter suggested an attitude of "et tu Elon," said Mr. Moya.
Amazon.com plans to hire 75,000 workers and offer $1,000 signing bonuses in some locations, the latest hiring spree in what has been a year of tremendous growth.
The retail and tech giant said its open roles are offering average pay of $17 an hour, an increase over the company's typical starting wage of $15 an hour.
SoftBank Group is pulling back from the investment unit SB Northstar, set up last year to invest in publicly traded technology stocks.
The unit's trades were so large they earned the Japanese investor the nickname "Nasdaq whale."
Chinese online bazaar Alibaba Group Holding posted its first quarterly loss since it went public after being hit by a record antitrust fine in China.
PayPal Holdings plans to move several core payment-processing applications to Google Cloud as the company experiences an upswing in activity fueled by changing consumer spending habits.
Write to Rob Curran at rob.curran@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
05-13-21 1714ET
