U.S. stocks kicked off the holiday-shortened week on a positive note, as technology stocks rose further on renewed enthusiasm over artificial intelligence, while investors awaited key economic data later this week.

A rally in tech stocks starting late last week, driven by Micron Technology’s blowout forecasts and a benign inflation report, has left the S&P 500 and Dow around 1% away from their record closing peak on December 11.

Micron rose 2%, while other chipmakers also gained, with the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor Index up 1.1%.

“You had a pretty swift pullback in many names and now all of a sudden, that’s being viewed as a buying opportunity and that trend is going to continue because you have really strong earnings,” said Hank Smith, director and head of investment strategy at Haverford Trust.

“I don’t think it’s analogous to the late 1990s with the internet boom, where so many of those companies forgot about earnings.”

Nvidia has told Chinese clients it aims to start shipping its second-most powerful AI chips to China before the Lunar New Year holiday in mid-February, Reuters reported citing people familiar with the matter. The chipmaker was last up 1.2%.

Tesla jumped 2.7% to an all-time high after CEO Elon Musk’s 2018 pay package was restored by the Delaware Supreme Court.

December has traditionally been a strong period for stock markets. Since 1950, the so-called Santa Claus rally has been reflected by the S&P 500 rising by an average of 1.3% over the last five trading days of the year and the first two trading days in January, according to the Stock Trader’s Almanac.

This year, that period starts Wednesday and runs through January 5.

Optimism around AI, a resilient U.S. economy and monetary policy easing put the three main indexes on course for their third consecutive year of gains, with the S&P 500 up more than 15%.

Main Markets Rise

At 09:36 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 180.3 points, or 0.37%, to 48,315.1. The S&P 500 gained 28.87 points, or 0.42%, to 6.863.4, while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 96.7 points, or 0.41%, to 23,404.3.

Eight of the 11 S&P sectors were trading higher, with materials and energy leading gains as commodity prices jumped. The information technology sector added 0.3%.

Wall Street’s fear gauge, the CBOE volatility index, also hit its lowest level since September.

Trading volumes are expected to remain light this week, with U.S. stock market closing at 1:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday and shut on Thursday for Christmas holiday.

But key economic data, including the preliminary reading of third-quarter GDP, December consumer confidence data and weekly jobless claims, are scheduled for release this week.

Among other movers, Warner Bros Discovery rose 4% after Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison agreed to provide a personal guarantee of $40.4 billion of the equity financing for Paramount Skydance’s offer to acquire the company. Paramount’s shares rose 5.1%.

Clearwater Analytics Holdings jumped 8.4% after a group of private equity firms led by Permira and Warburg Pincus clinched a deal to acquire the investment and accounting software maker for about $8.4 billion, including debt.

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(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar and Shashwat Chauhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)