Wall St. rallies after sell-off

Wall Street steadied itself Monday after last week’s stock market slide caused by the newest coronavirus variant, with investors now waiting for more clues about just how much damage it may do to the economy.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 1.3%, recovering more than half its drop from Friday. Bond yields and crude oil also recovered chunks of what they lost.

With vaccines in hand — and with the benefit of a weekend to mull over whether Friday’s sharp market moves were overdone — analysts said the world may be in better position to weather this newest potential wave.

The Dow Jones industrial average ended with a gain of 236.60 points, or 0.7%, at 35,135.94.

The S&P 500 rose 60.65 points to 4,655.27, while the Nasdaq advanced 291.18 points to 15,782.83. The Russell 2000 index of small companies was headed for its

own rebound after climbing 1.6% in the early going, but its gains faded by late afternoon. The index slipped 3.96 points, or 0.2%, to 2,241.98.

“Because so much is still unknown about the Omicron variant, it could take us a week or more to recover what we lost in a single day,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 1.51% from 1.49% late Friday, recovering

some of its steep slide from 1.64% that day. It tends to

rise and fall with expectations for the economy’s strength and for inflation.

The VIX, an index that measures how worried investors are about upcoming drops for the S&P 500, also eased significantly. But it’s not all the way back to where it was before Omicron.

Besides waiting on more clues about how much economic damage Omicron will ultimately do, the market has several big mileposts this week that could swing prices. The headliner is likely to be Friday’s jobs report; economists expect to see an acceleration in hiring by employers during November.