Winner! Dow's up streak hits 7 days

The Dow Jones industrial average, coming off its biggest weekly gain since February, ended modestly higher Monday to post its seventh-straight session of gains as Wall Street awaited the barrage of corporate earnings reports starting Tuesday.

Last week, the Dow charged ahead more than 600 points, or nearly 4%, as investors continued to shrug off a late-summer correction and resumed buying of stocks as the odds of a late-year interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve got slimmer and a rebound in oil and commodities gave traders more hope that a bottom has been put in after the stock market's first 10% price drop, or correction, in four years.

The Dow is in its hottest streak since at least December.

Wall Street was also digesting a big deal in the tech sector, where Dell teamed up with a private equity firm Silver Lake to purchase data storage player EMC for $33.15 per share in a blockbuster cash and stock deal valued at more than $67 billion. The deal is being billed as the biggest ever in the tech sector.

Following a quiet Monday due to the Columbus Day holiday, the market's focus will quickly shift Tuesday to the third-quarter earnings season.

Expectations are low, with analysts expecting profit for the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index to contract 4.5% in the July thru September quarter, according to Thomson Reuters. Thirty-six companies in the broad market index are set to report results this week, with big bank JPMorgan Chase, drug giant Johnson and Johnson and tech player Intel set to kick off things Tuesday. Wall Street is betting that a large swath of companies will be able to top the market's lowered expectations.

All the major U.S. stock indexes finished moderately higher after a mixed start. The Dow gained 47 points, or 0.3%, while the S&P 500 climbed 0.1% and the Nasdaq ended 0.2% higher.

The focus on Wall Street will quickly shift to the performance of individual U.S. companies and away from global worries and big macro concerns like interest rates, at least for the time being, experts say.

"The stock market's direction now will come from third-quarter corporate earnings as Alcoa unofficially began the earnings season last week by missing estimates on both the top and bottom line," William Lynch, director of investments at Hinsdale Associates told client in a research note. "Not only will earnings results be important, but also what companies say about their business and their earnings guidance going forward."

Stocks rose sharply in Asia, with Japan's Nikkei 225 rising 1.6%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index climbing 1.2%. Shares in mainland China's Shanghai composite index were up 3.3%, helped in part by fresh stimulus measures.

European shares were mixed Monday. London's FTSE 100 was down 0.7%, Germany's DAX was up 0.2%, and the CAC 40 in Paris was off 0.3%.

Banks and the U.S. bond market are closed for the Columbus Day holiday.