NEW YORK –
After a manic week that began with Japanese stocks falling to their worst loss since 1987’s Black Monday, only for U.S. stocks to soar later to their best day since 2022, slight gains on Friday carried Wall Street almost exactly back to where it began the week.
The S&P 500 rose 0.5 per cent to shave what had been a brutal loss for the week down to a barely registerable 0.04 per cent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 51 points, or 0.1 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.5 per cent.
The gains pulled the S&P 500 back within 5.7 per cent of its all-time high set last month, after it had sunk nearly 10 per cent below that record during the week. It was a vicious return of volatility for a market that had been rising smoothly, and a measure of fear on Wall Street briefly surged …