Late reversal lifts Wall Street from early drop

Wall Street rallied back from a sharp morning drop on Thursday, led by a resurgence for some of the year’s most beatendown stocks.

The S&P 500 climbed 1.2% in another scattershot day of trading, with many stocks flipping from the bottom of the leaderboard to the top following a few sharp reversals in momentum. The zigzag trading followed up on earlier losses for Asian and European stocks, while Treasury yields sank in a sign of increased pessimism.

It’s the latest wobble for Wall Street, which has been wavering for weeks as it digests gargantuan moves the market made earlier this year, first down more than 30% on worries about the coming recession and then up more than 30% on hopes for a relatively quick rebound.

Trading has been particularly erratic this week, as investors rethink bets that the reopening of economies around the world will allow for a relatively quick return of growth. Another possible flare-up in tensions between the world’s largest economies is also hitting markets, with comments from President Donald Trump about China further weighing on them Thursday.

The S&P 500 rose 32.50 to 2,852.20 after rallying back from an early-morning loss of 1.9%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 377.37, or 1.6%, to 23,625.34 after earlier being down 458 points. The Nasdaq composite gained 80.55, or 0.9%, to 8,943.72 after erasing its earlier loss of 1.8%.

Stocks have suddenly changed direction several times this week, oftentimes late in the trading day, with analysts often seeing few easy explanations for why.

“Instead of it being a stock market where everything moves in the same direction — up and down — whether it’s large, small, growth or value, it’s more of a market of stocks of individual companies,” said Tom Martin, senior portfolio manager at Globalt Investments.