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Dow ends up 401 in another stunning U-turn

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-10-17 11:47

NEW YORK -- A stock market as difficult to fathom as it is volatile pulled off another stunning U-turn on Thursday, transforming a 380-point loss for the Dow Jones industrials into a 401-point gain. 

Traders in the S&P 500 stock index options pit at the Chicago Board Options Exchange signal offers during morning trading in Chicago, Illinois. More troubling US economic data surfaced Thursday showing the banking and credit crisis has taken a sharp bite out of the manufacturing sector, increasing the risk of a deep and long downturn. [Agencies]

Wall Street seemed sure of this much: The whipsawing will continue.

"You're not going to see 50-point ranges, you're going to see two-three-four hundred point ranges," said Woody Dorsey, president of Market Semiotics, a financial forecasting firm in Castleton, Vt.

At any other time in the history of the stock markets, a day like Thursday would be enough to draw a double take. But in these extraordinary times, it was the second-calmest day of the week.

The Dow set a record on Monday with a 936-point gain. After a 77-point loss on Tuesday, a relative breather, sellers stampeded on Wednesday and drove the Dow back down 733.

On Thursday, heavy selling in the morning took the Dow close to 8,200, but stocks rallied into the lunch hour and picked up steam in the afternoon. The average finished at 8,979.26.

The gain of 401 points marked the 21st trading session out of the past 24 in which the Dow has finished with a triple-digit gain or loss, an unprecedented run of volatility.

Thanks to a massive cash infusion by European central banks and the US Treasury, interest rates on overnight, one-week and two-week debt began to shrink, and lending loosened up just a bit.

"It's a start, but we've still got a long way to go," said Kim Rupert, fixed income analyst at research firm Action Economics LLC.

Loan auctions by the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Swiss National Bank, as well as the Federal Reserve's plan to buy about $250 billion in bank stocks, seemed to restore some confidence to credit markets.

"Credit markets are thawing," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank. "The fear I had that our capital market system would grind to a halt, I don't have that concern. I can sleep all night now."

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