US stocks shake off slide with late-afternoon rally

Stocks mounted a swift turnaround on Wall Street Thursday after a late-afternoon rally erased the steep losses from earlier in the day.

The reversal pulled the Dow Jones Industrial Average from a 611-point loss, placing it on track to extend gains from a day earlier, when the market had its best day in 10 years. The S&P 500 also showed a slight increase just before the closing bell.

Gains in materials stocks, banks and health care companies outweighed losses in retailers and other sectors.

Volatility has been the norm this month. The market remains on track for its worst December since 1931, during the depths of the Depression, and could finish 2018 with its biggest losses in a decade. Even with Wednesday’s big gains, the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq are all down more than 11 percent for the month.

“The last two days are really demonstrable of what the market is struggling with,” said Tom Martin, senior portfolio manager of Globalt Investments. “It’s looking for a bottom. It’s looking for a reason to gain a little more confidence.”

The partial government shutdown that began over the weekend has weighed on the market. Investors have also been unnerved by the personnel turmoil inside the Trump administration, trade tensions with China, the slowing global economy and worries that corporate profits are going to slip sooner or later.