stock market

It was a quiet end to an eventful week. Markets around the world rallied on Monday after Greece and its creditors agreed to a broad framework for a new loan program. Stronger quarterly earnings reports from a range of big U.S. companies, including Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, added more encouragement.

"It appears the sky is clearing," said Linda Duessel, senior equity strategist at Federated Investors.

Major indexes headed higher at the opening bell, following solid gains in Europe, then kept climbing throughout the afternoon. Nearly three stocks rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange, and every sector in the S&P 500 finished with gains.

Nine hours after a self-imposed deadline passed, European officials announced the breakthrough on Greece early Monday. 

The Dow Jones industrial average declined 132 points, or 0.7 percent, to 17,649 as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time.

The Standard & Poor's 500 gave up 13 points, or 0.6 percent, to 2,068. The Nasdaq fell 32 points, or 0.7 percent, to 4,965.

Stocks fell 6 percent in Shanghai despite the Chinese government's latest efforts to shore up the market. Chinese stocks have plunged in the last month but are still up 70 percent over the past year.

European markets were broadly higher as talks continue on Greece's debt woes.

Greece and its creditors held talks in Brussels on Tuesday to discuss how to keep the country from falling out of the euro. 

Reports out late in the day said European officials considered providing Greece with emergency funding to help it avoid defaulting on its debts. Greece has little time left before its banks run out of cash.

"It's all Greece all the time," said Burt White, chief investment officer at LPL Financial.

Twenty one Chinese securities companies, in a statement released Saturday, said they would pledge no less than 120 billion yuan ($19.33 billion) to invest in Chinese stocks. The securities companies also said they would continue to invest in the market as long the Shanghai Composite index remains below 4,500. It closed at 3,686 on Friday.

Chinese regulators have also decided to suspend new Chinese initial public offerings, according to The Wall Street Journal.

KEEPING SCORE: European stocks were mixed in early trading, with France's CAC 40 slipping 0.1 percent to 4,828.72 while Germany's DAX was flat at 11,096.84. Britain's FTSE 100 edged 0.1 percent lower to 6,622.15. U.S. markets were closed for the Independence Day holiday weekend.

The world's biggest online social network knocked the world's largest retailer out of the top 10 list of the highest-valued companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index on Monday and the gap widened on Tuesday.

While the switch is mostly symbolic — nothing specific happened this week to warrant it, and the difference between the two giants is not that big — it signals investors' insatiable appetite for successful tech stocks. Apple, Microsoft and Google top the list of the highest-valued companies in the U.S., and Facebook looks to be on its way to joining them.