The question on investors’ minds was whether today’s rebound, following a four-day loss of 467.17 in the Dow Jones industrial average, was an isolated blip or marked an end to the sell-off.

"We’ve had the 5 percent correction that everybody’s been waiting for, and the market’s way oversold now," said Michael Murphy, head trader at Wachovia Securities. "But is what we’re seeing going to be a big bounce or a small bounce? That’ll be the big test."

According to preliminary calculations, the Dow Jones industrial average climbed 111.70, or 1.1 percent, to 10,240.08.

Broader stock indicators were also higher. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 13.83, or 1.2 percent, to 1,120.61, and the Nasdaq composite index jumped 40.82, or 2.1 percent, to 1,984.71.

Today’s gains did little to offset the losses of the previous four days. F or the week, the Dow lost 355.47, or 3.4 percent, the worst week for the Dow since late March 2003. The Nasdaq fell 62.92, or 3.1 percent, and the S&P 500 lost 36.26, or 3.1 percent. All three indexes finished down for the year for the first time.

Joseph Battipaglia, chief investment officer at Ryan Beck & Co., attributed today’s gains to the strong economic foundation that remained from the markets’ nearly 12-month rally, which kept money from fleeing out of stocks and into bonds or commodities.

"This is very typical of a healthy market," Battipaglia said. "The market needed to correct itself to bring stock prices back in line, and now it looks to me that investors are looking at this as a chance to buy."

Buyers were aided by the widely watched University of Michigan consumer sentiment index, which slipped to a better-than-expected 94.1 in March from 94.4 at the end of February, according to media reports on the subscriber-only index. The preliminary tally will be revised at the end of the month.

However, the confidence index did not take into account this week’s losses on Wall Street, nor the increased threat of terrorism after the train bombings in Spain that killed 199 people yesterday.

The government provided yet another set of contradictory economic reports before today’s session. Business inventories rose 0.1 percent in January, and business sales climbed 0.4 percent in the same period. But the Commerce Department also reported that the deficit in the current account — the broadest measure of U.S. trade — rose 12.7 percent in 2003 to an all-time high of $541.8 billion.