Stocks gained on Monday as investors picked up recent top performers before the first quarter's end and energy company shares jumped with oil prices.

Investors scooped up shares in the industrials sector -- the quarter's top performer so far, with the S&P industrials index rising 13 percent <.GSPI> for the quarter to date. The S&P 500 as a whole is up 5.2 percent for the period, about even with the fourth-quarter's gain of 5.5 percent.

It's not a bad way to start a holiday-shortened week, said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co in Lake Oswego, Oregon. What we're seeing is some quarter-end rebalancing by institutional portfolio managers.

He added, The euro is up, and we saw that translate into oil gains.

The stock market will be closed for Good Friday.

Portfolio managers typically scout out recent best performers near the end of a quarter in a practice known as window dressing.

The S&P energy index <.GSPE> rose 1.6 percent as oil futures surged 3 percent to $82.38 a barrel, while materials shares also rose. Exxon Mobil advanced 1.1 percent to $67.30. A decline in the dollar helped the advance in commodities.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> was up 41.87 points, or 0.39 percent, at 10,892.23. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.SPX> was up 5.59 points, or 0.48 percent, at 1,172.18. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.IXIC> was up 9.51 points, or 0.40 percent, at 2,404.64.

Among the Dow industrials, shares of heavy equipment maker Caterpillar Inc added 1.6 percent at $63.44. The Dow is up 4.5 percent for the quarter so far, down from gains of 7.4 percent in previous quarter, while the Nasdaq is on track for gains of 5.9 percent this quarter, versus an increase of 6.9 percent in the fourth quarter.

U.S. consumer spending rose as expected in February for a fifth straight month, while stagnant incomes pushed savings to their lowest level since October 2008, the government said.

Even though the market will be closed on Friday, the Labor Department is scheduled to issue its key payrolls report for March.

Helping the market, debt-stricken Greece launched a sovereign bond issue, easing worries about its finance problems.

On the down side, Citigroup Inc fell 3 percent to $4.18 after the U.S. Treasury said it will sell all of the 7.7 billion Citi shares it owns over the course of this year.

On the Nasdaq, Apple Inc rose 0.8 percent to $232.84 after it set a date for the launch of its new iPad tablet computer.

(Editing by Kenneth Barry)

Apple inc.