Today was an amazing change of fortunes from the last few days on wall street. Stocks moved higher early in the day and gained throughout the day. The major indices finished the session at their highs of the day. The Dow jumped by 320 points. The S&P 500 moved higher by 42, or 2.91%. The Nasdaq skyrocketed higher by almost 90 points, or 3.46%.
The group that served as the leader of the market today was the financial sector. Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE:GS) came out and stated today that the company is not sitting on losses and doesn't expect any kind of significant writedowns. GS shares surged 8.54%, but the Goldman news served as a catalyst for many other financial stocks as well. Wells Fargo Corporation (NYSE:WFC) rose by 4.76% on the day. Wachovia Corporation (NYSE:WB) gained by 7.65% on strong volume. Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) shares gained 4.55% on nearly triple their normal daily volume. Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE) surged by 11.4% on very strong volume as well.
Technology stocks were another area of real strength today. Many of those popular tech stocks that had been hit hard of late rebounded in a big way today. Apple Inc. (Nasdaq:AAPL) gained 10.48% today on speculation that it may have its iPhone sold in China. Corning Incorporated (NYSE:GLW) added 10% today after raising its 4th quarter estimates. NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq:NVDA) charged higher by 8.82% today after losing more than 10% yesterday. Autodesk (Nasdaq:ADSK) shares rose 7.02% today after an analyst at Goldman upgraded the stock.
Retail stocks that have been hit hard of late also jumped higher on the day today. Nordstrom (NYSE:JWN) shares gained 4.49%, continuing its strength from yesterday. American Eagle Outfitters (NYSE:AEO) shares rose by 5.36% after hitting new lows just last Thursday. Tiffany & Company (NYSE:TIF) shares surged by 7.54% as the stock continues its outperformance of the overall retail group.
The big question everyone was asking all across the street today was, is this a sign of the bottom or just a dead cat bounce? Face it, huge up days occur quite often in very negative times for stocks so a one day move does not tell us anything. My opinion is, one day does not a trend make. This market is still dangerous in the short term. Since I am a bull I personally hope that the bottom has been hit, but in the event that it hasn't I think it would be very wise to be very careful right now.
The volume on the exchanges was fairly heavy today. The Nasdaq traded about 2.75 billion shares and the NYSE traded almost 1.7 billion shares. These figures certainly don't stack up to last Wednesday's massive volumes on the huge down day in the market, but they are certainly fairly impressive.
The swings we are seeing in some stocks with very large capitalizations is quite amazing. It is becoming a commonplace to see companies with market caps above $50 billion move 10% or more in one day, which used to be unheard of. Volatility is the name of the game right now, that is abundantly clear.
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