Roundup: U.S. stocks rebound after heavy sell-off

U.S. stocks posted modest gains on Monday, as investors re-assessed the impact of February's strong jobs data while no major releases are due during the day.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 138.94 points, or 0.78 percent, to 17,995.72. The S&P 500 added 8.17 points, or 0.39 percent, to 2,079.43. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 15.07 points, or 0.31 percent, to 4,942.44.

U.S. equities witnessed a sharp decline Friday, as investors worried that a strong monthly jobs report heightened speculations that the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates sooner than expected.

Traders were wondering that the markets might overreact to the jobs report, as hourly wages only ticked up 0.1 percent, missing market consensus.

The coming week's economic-data schedule looks light, while Thursday's release of retail sales will be the economic highlight of the week.

Apple was in focus Monday as the tech giant unveiled its first wearable product, known as Apple Watch. The smart watch is the company's newest device in years. Its previous device, iPad, was released in 2010.

Priced at 349 U.S. dollars for the base model, Apple Watch works mostly with iPhone and claims to carry more features and facilitates more applications, or apps, than parallel products on the market.

Among basic functions, it shows email, texts and phone calls, news and fitness readings, as well as weather forecast and personal schedules.

Apple also announced a series of updates to some of the company 's products and services before unveiling Apple Watch.

Apple shares climbed as much as 2.35 percent following the announcement of its updates, but then shaved most gains to end mildly higher, up 0.43 percent to 127.14 dollars apiece, as markets were kind of disappointed about the wearable product.

Overseas, the European Central Bank began its 60 billion euros per month bond buying program on Monday with the aim to fend off deflation and boost the eurozone economy by pumping more money into the real economy.

The CBOE Volatility Index, often referred to as Wall Street's fear gauge, decreased 0.92 percent to end at 15.06 Monday.

In other markets, U.S. crude price rebounded as investors re- evaluated the impact of robust February jobs data.

Light, sweet crude for April delivery gained 39 cents to settle at 50.00 dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The dollar went down against most major currencies as investors took profits from gains on the country's strong nonfarm payrolls released Friday.

In late New York trading, the euro was flat at 1.0858 dollars as in the previous session, while the dollar bought 121.18 Japanese yen, higher than 120.69 yen of the previous session.

Gold futures on the COMEX division of the Nymex rose as the dollar weakened and continued uncertainty in Greece boosted the precious metal.

The most active gold contract for April delivery rose 2.2 dollars, or 0.19 percent, to settle at 1,166.50 dollars per ounce. Endite