Posted at 11:15 a.m., Friday, August 31, 2001
Stocks slightly recover after disastrous week
• Hawai'i Stocks
• Updated Market Chart
Associated Press
NEW YORK — Wall Street ended a terrible week with a blip upward today, but the modest advance, the outcome of a difficult and choppy session, only underscored how fragile and fractious the stock market has become.
The gain wasn't enough to bring the Dow Jones industrials back above 10,000, one day after the blue chips fell below that mark for the first time since April 9. An unexpectedly strong report on factory orders sent stocks surging early in the session, but the good news was quickly overshadowed by investors' longstanding concerns over the lackluster economy and disappointing company profits.
According to preliminary figures, the Dow, up more than 100 points in the early going closed up 30.17 at 9,949.75.
Broader stock indexes also were higher. The Nasdaq composite index rose 13.75 at 1,805.43, while the Standard & Poor's 500 index edged up 4.55 to 1,133.58.
Today's listless performance followed four straight days of declines that sent the Dow down more than 500 points or nearly 5 percent. Yesterday, the Dow dropped 1.7 percent — closing below the 10,000 level for the first time in four months — after a spate of bad economic and corporate news.
The fluctuations during today's trading were "just vacillation," said Jon Brorson, director of equities at Northern Trust. "Investors are in an 'I don't want to shoot until I see the whites of their eyes' mode."
Concerned about the market's previous selloffs, investors have been reluctant to buy because they sense no immediate possibility for a recovery in share prices. They're also waiting in vain for a solid string of news from the government or companies that the economy may be ready for a turnaround.
"We need tangible evidence of a bottom to restore confidence," Brorson said.
The Commerce Department report today that factory orders rose 0.1 percent gave investors an excuse to snap up bargains, but experts said the uptick was little more than temporary burst of buying.
"It's very hard to be confident and make any bold statements here about economic recovery when the people actually running the companies have no idea how business is going to be a few months from now," said Charles White, president and portfolio manager at Avatar Associates.
Orders to U.S. factories rose slightly in July, led by increases in demand for automobiles and other transportation products, furniture, household appliances and communications equipment, the Commerce Department said.
Among Dow component stocks, Alcoa rose 63 cents to $38.12 and J.P. Morgan was up 16 cents to $39.40. IBM dropped 41 cents to $99.95 and Hewlett-Packard fell 19 cents to $23.21.
Advancing issues led decliners by about 3 to 2 on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume was 903.57 million shares, compared to 1.14 billion a day earlier.
The Russell 2000 index rose 0.50 to 468.56.
Stocks overseas were mixed. Japan's Nikkei stock average lost 2.06 percent. Germany's DAX index was up 0.50 percent, Britain's FT-SE 100 rose 0.23, and France's CAC-40 dropped 0.31 percent.
