iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — The U.S. stock market, which has lost more than $3 trillion in the last 15 days, started out strong on Friday, rallying 300 points at the opening bell before tripping, falling and
struggling to get back up in the afternoon.
The Dow was taking traders on a wild ride, falling more than 400 points before pulling out of the nosedive as bargain hunters jumped into the market. Just after 2 p.m., the Dow had surged back into
positive territory and up 60 points.
The other major indexes also started out trading up before taking a dive. The S&P 500 fell more nearly 40 points to 2,541, and the Nasdaq tanked more than 100 points after coming out of the gate up
1.5 percent from the previous day. Both indexes followed the Dow’s climb out of the abyss in the afternoon and eased into the green.
The Dow has finished in negative territory four out of the past five days.
Since the Dow hit record high of 26,616 on Jan. 26, the U.S. stock market has lost a whopping $3.1 trillion, Yousef Abbasi, global market strategist for JonesTrading, told ABC News.
The seesaw day on the market came after the Asian and European markets both closed in negative territory. Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 508 points, or 2.32 percent, to 21,382, and China’s Shanghai
composite sank 4.02 percent to 3,130. The Pan-European STOXX 600 was off .70 percent and Britain’s FTSE was down 34 points, or .49 percent.
The Dow and S&P 500, which also soared to a record high of 2,872 on Jan. 26, have both pulled back more than 10 percent in the past two weeks, thrusting the market into a full correction.
“I’m not ready to call the bottom,” Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab, told ABC News at the close of the market on Thursday.
He went on, “I always tell people it’s best to wait until you get an ease back in volatility and you get two good, solid days. We haven’t had that. We had one solid up day and the second day looked
like it might be an up day and then it sold off into the close. I didn’t know it would be this bad today, but clearly it’s not over.”
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