Fed stems Wall Street rout

Think of it as a turnaround Thursday.

The Dow Jones industrial average staged an epic intraday rally that pared 705 points of losses to cap a wild session.

When the final bell rang, stocks closed mostly lower after a dramatic session that saw the Dow plunge early in the day on concern that the arrest of a Huawei executive would reignite Chinese trade worries.

The market, however, clawed back most of its losses on a report that the Federal Reserve may slow the pace of raising interest rates in 2019.

The Dow was down 79.40 points, to 24,947.67, at the close, while the S&P 500 slipped 4.11 points, to 2,695.95. Both indexes ended the day back in positive territory for 2018.

The Nasdaq climbed 29.83 points, to 7,188.26, extending its gain for the year to 4.1 percent.

Investors were earlier rattled by news that Canadian authorities had arrested Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei, at the request of US authorities on suspicion of violating sanctions against Iran.

Stock-index futures dropped so precipitously Thursday morning that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange triggered circuit breakers to avoid deeper losses.

The arrest puts pressure on shaky trade relations between the US and China. Doubts surrounding the weekend tariff truce announced at the Group of 20 summit in Argentina and ominous developments in the bond market drove sharp losses for stocks Tuesday.

A Wall Street Journal report that the Fed may consider a pause after raising rates later this month helped the market bounce back Thursday afternoon.

Officials still think the broad direction of short-term interest rates will be higher in 2019, according to the Journal.

As they push up the benchmark lending rate, the officials are becoming less sure how fast they will need to act or how far to go and want to assess how the US economy is holding up, the Journal reported.