Dow up 3.4% for week; is the worst over? PM ET/20/2008 5:15 PM ET
A rally erupts on Wall Street as some analysts say the worst of the credit
crisis may be over. Citigroup jumps 11% and leads financial stocks. GE gets an
upgrade, but FedEx thinks the outlook is still weak. Markets will close for
Good Friday.
By Charley Blaine and Elizabeth Strott
The stock market finished a holiday-shortened week with a big rally, recovering
most of Wednesday's loss and generating talk that the worst of the 2008
sell-off was over.
Led by financial stocks and helped by falling commodity prices, the Dow Jones
industrials finished with a gain of nearly 262 points, or 2.2%, to 12,361. The
Standard & Poor's 500 Index jumped 31 points, or 2.4%, to 1,330, and the Nasdaq
Composite Index rose 48 points, or 2.2%, to 2,258.
Markets will be closed tomorrow for Good Friday.
The market was pushed higher early on by an upgrade for Dow component General
Electric (GE, news, msgs), which jumped 5.5% to $37.56. But financial stocks
powered the market after analyst Richard Bove of Punk, Ziegel & Co. said the
financial crisis that has roiled markets for months is now over. Bove cited
interest-rate cuts from the Federal Reserve and additional moves to add cash to
the financial system so banks and brokerages can figure out how to handle bad
assets.
Investors, he added in a client note, should take advantage of the
"once-in-a-generation opportunity" and buy financials. And buy they did.
The Standard & Poor's Banking Index ($BIX.X) was up 7% to 265. Citigroup (C,
news, msgs) was the top performer among the 30 Dow stocks with a 10.2% gain to
$22.50. JPMorgan Chase (JPM, news, msgs), which won a deal to buy crippled
investment bank Bear Stearns (BSC, news, msgs), was up 8.2% to $45.97.
Bear Stearns itself was up 11.8% to $5.96 as disgruntled investors search for
ways to get more money from JPMorgan.
________________________________________________________
Bergabunglah dengan orang-orang yang berwawasan, di di bidang Anda! Kunjungi
Yahoo! Answers saat ini juga di http://id.answers.yahoo.com/
