us stock benchmarks on monday capped a topsyturvy month with a powerful flourish higher which helped to avert the sharpest january decline on record for the nasdaq composite index comp  strategists attributed some of monday’s buys to a hunt for bargains among the beatendown names markets broadly have been wrestling with the prospect of tighter monetary policy which is forcing a massive repricing of the shares of oncehighly flying technology and growthoriented companies january’s bout of turbulence has been catalyzed by a surge in inflation and labor shortages that have prompted the federal reserve to accelerate plans for ending a prolonged period of easymoney that has helped to foster speculative buying   the nasdaq composite index rose by about 470 points or 34 to around 14240 on a preliminary basis   the sp 500 index spx closed 84 points or 19 to about 4515   the dow jones industrial average djia climbed 406 points or 12 to 35131   for the month the dow ended down 33 which was only its worst month since a 37 decline in november the sp 500 meanwhile closed 53 lower and the nasdaq composite ended january down 898 it was the worst monthly decline for both of those indexes since march of 2020 the height of pandemicdrive selling it also was the worst january decline for the nasdaq composite since a 989 decline in 2008