by Carolina Mandal and Bansari Mayur Kamdar

(Reuters) – Wall Street edged higher on Monday and posted its longest winning streak in six years, as investors placed bets on sectors beyond technology in a week filled with earnings reports and a Federal Reserve meeting.

“What you’re seeing right now is people are widening the market,” said Randy Frederick, managing director of trading and derivatives at the Schwab Center for Financial Research.

“People are probably starting to take some of the profits (in technology) and start investing in other parts of the markets so that they are getting a little bit better deals.”

Investors are awaiting earnings from Microsoft (NASDAQ: ), Google owner Alphabet (NASDAQ: ) and Meta Platforms this week, which will show whether their stocks justify skyrocketing valuations.

The tech-heavy index is up 34.3% this year, outperforming its peers as rate-sensitive megacap growth companies surged on optimism about artificial intelligence and the end of the Fed’s tightening cycle.

The Nasdaq lagged other indexes as investors turned their attention to non-tech stocks for bargains, elevating sectors from energy to banks.

helping the Dow achieve its longest winning streak since February 2017, purlin (NYSE: ) gained nearly 2% as the oil giant reported early quarterly earnings over the weekend.

As of Friday, second-quarter earnings are expected to decline by 7.9%, data from Refinitiv showed.

Investors ignored a survey that showed US business activity slowed to a five-month low in July, pulled down by slowing services sector growth.

“You have growing confidence that there could be a soft landing and an increasingly dovish Fed,” said Carol Schleff, chief investment officer at BMO Family Office. Some of the excess cash is going back into shares, he said.

The Fed is expected to hike interest rates by 25 basis points at its policy-making meeting on Wednesday.

Most economists polled by Reuters expect this to be the last hike in the current tightening cycle, as data this month showed signs of deflation.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 183.55 points, or 0.52%, to 35,411.24, the Nasdaq Composite rose 18.3 points, or 0.40%, to 4,554.64 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 26.06 points, or 0.19%, to 14,058.87.

Volume on US exchanges stood at 9.43 billion shares compared to the full session average of 10.30 billion shares in the last 20 trading days.

Energy stocks led gains in nine of the 11 major S&P 500 sectors.

Toymaker Mattel (NASDAQ: ) rose 1.8% as the “Barbie” movie set a record for the biggest domestic opening of 2023.

AMC Entertainment (NYSE: ) jumped 32.9% after a judge blocked the theater chain’s stock conversion plan, leaving investors at risk of losing their stake in the company. Preferred shares of AMC closed flat.

US-listed shares of Chinese companies are preferred alibaba (NYSE:) and JD (NASDAQ:).com rose 4.5% and 3.5%, respectively, as their top leaders announced economic policy adjustments to expand domestic demand.

Exchange operator Nasdaq cut the weight of a handful of companies, which are roughly in half, to address “over-concentration” in the benchmark.

Issues that advance on the NYSE outnumber those that decline by a 1.61-to-1 ratio; On the Nasdaq, a 1.09-to-1 ratio favored declines.

The S&P 500 posted 22 new 52-week highs and one new low; The Nasdaq Composite recorded 58 new highs and 97 new lows.

(This story has been corrected to change year-to-date performance of the Nasdaq index in paragraph 5 from 41% to 34.3%)