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10A Daily News – Friday, August 12, 2011 Dow up 423 as Wall Street whipsaws again NEW YORK (AP) — Lurching higher in its week of whiplash, Wall Street recorded one of its biggest gains of all time Thursday after investors seized on a few signs that the economy might just be able to avoid a new recession. The Dow Jones industri- al average soared 423 points. It had already fallen 634 points Monday, risen 429 Tuesday and fallen 519 Wednesday. Never before has the Dow had four 400- point swings in a row. The pieces of news that sent Wall Street rocketing higher were not exactly blockbusters: Cisco Sys- tems said its profit was bet- ter than expected, the job market got a little better, and France tried to raise confidence in its shaken banking system. But this is a week in which any move by the market — higher or lower — seems to touch off an investor stampede. So it was on Thursday, when stocks shot higher at the opening bell and never turned around. Carlton Neel, who man- ages about $2 billion as a senior portfolio manager at Virtus Investment Partners, said investors are so scared of being late to a rally or a sell-off that they are trading in herds. ‘‘Fear tends to be a much more powerful emo- tion, and the sell-offs tend to be more violent than the rallies,’’ he said. ‘‘But peo- ple are worried about miss- ing the bottom, so you will have a few melt-ups along Europe and the stability of European banks. During those three weeks, the Dow is down almost 1,600 points, or about 12 percent. It is still up 70 percent since its post- meltdown low of March 9, 2009. President Barack Obama acknowledged this week’s wild market swings and made another attempt to calm the nerves of Americans who have watched their retirement accounts and other invest- ments shrivel since mid- July. the way.’’ The four days of trading this week have been the wildest for the market since the financial crisis during the fall of 2008. Each day has instantly taken a place in Wall Street history. The Dow’s losses on Monday and Wednesday were its sixth- and ninth-largest by points, and its gains on Tuesday and Thursday were the 10th- and 11th- largest. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index has also risen or fallen at least 4 percent each day. That has not hap- pened on four consecutive days since November 2008, the depths of the cri- sis. It’s only the third time since 1934, said Kevin Pleines, an analyst at Birinyi Associates. The first was October 1987 — including the day known as Black Monday, when the S&P plunged more than 20 percent. On Thursday, American investors got an encourag- ing report before the mar- ket opened when European stock markets turned around their losses and had one of their best days in recent weeks. The leaders of Germany and France, the biggest economies of the nations that use the euro currency, announced they will meet Tuesday to discuss the financial crisis on the conti- nent. The stocks of French banks have been ham- mered because of concerns they will be hit with mas- sive losses from European sovereign debt. One Euro- 220 Antelope Blvd., Red Bluff (530) 527-6164 pean nation after another has struggled with debt, with Spain and Italy the lat- est. France is trying to assure financial markets that it will not be down- graded from AAA, as the United States was. All three leading credit rating agencies reaffirmed the top rating for France. An hour before the U.S. markets opened, the gov- ernment reported that fewer Americans joined the unemployment line last week. The number filing for unemployment benefits fell below 400,000, the first time that has happened since April. When the opening bell rang, technology stocks led the market higher. Cisco Systems, a maker of com- puter equipment, rose more than 15 percent after it reported profit that was bet- ter than Wall Street expect- ed. It also said its revenue this quarter would also be better than expected. The Dow finished at 11,143.31, up 423.37 points, or about 4 percent. The S&P 500 finished up 4.6 percent and the Nasdaq composite index 4.7 per- cent. It was three weeks ago, on July 22, when the stock market began a long losing streak. Investors were wor- ried mostly about the showdown in Washington over whether to raise the nation’s borrowing limit. Then came one sign after another that economic growth was much slower than analysts had thought, in addition to growing wor- ries about the debt crisis in RANDAL S. ELLOWAY DDS IMPLANTS DENTISTRY 2426 SO. 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