Jan. 23, 2008
Stocks staged a dramatic intraday turnaround Wednesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising more than 600 points from its session nadir to end the day with an advance of 300 points, as financial shares rallied. Word in the afternoon that regulators at the New York Insurance Department met Wednesday with banks that are parties to contracts with bond insurers to discuss ways of stabilizing the business and bringing in additional capital and capacity fueled optimism about credit conditions. Shares of insurer Ambac surged 72%, while MBIA bounced higher by 33%.
The Nasdaq Composite Index ended with a gain of better than 1% despite steep losses for tech bellwethers such as Apple, Google and Research In Motion. The S&P 500 surged nearly 2%. Like the Dow industrials, both indexes had been sharply lower in earlier trading.
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