The strong finish marked a reversal for the indexes, which had all been in the red earlier in the day.wire.
Wall Street ended a volatile week of trading Friday with a late-afternoon buying spree that gave the major stock indexes their biggest gains of the year and snapped a three-week losing streak. The S&P 500 rose 2.4 percent, with nearly all of it coming in the last hour of trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 1.7 percent and the Nasdaq jumped 3.1 percent. The strong finish marked a reversal for the indexes, which had all been in the red earlier in the day. The Nasdaq managed the biggest about-face, recovering from a 0.9 percent deficit. Friday was only the latest in a string of sudden moves up and down this week. Markets have been jittery as investors try to gauge how aggressively the Federal Reserve will move to ease its historic support for markets and the economy. There is likely going to be more volatility ahead as investors closely watch the impact of interest rate increases on the broader economy and the financial markets. “I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet in terms of this kind of frenzied market behavior,” said Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab. The S&P 500 rose 105.34 points to 4,431.85. The index’s biggest gain since June 2020 comes late in a week where investors had been monitoring the S&P 500 for what market watchers call a “correction.” That’s when an index sheds more than 10 percent of its value from a record high.
