The Dow Jones industrial average, after losing 161 points yesterday, rose more than 45 points in the early going, then plummeted 167 in the afternoon before bargain hunters drove blue chips up sharply in extremely heavy trading. By the close, it had managed a 9.25-point gain to 5,358.76. But that's still 7.2 percent below the May 22 record of 5778.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq stock market's main index was off less than 1 percent, recovering some of its earlier steep losses, but leaving it with almost no gain at all for the year so far.

For Wall Street, the big problem is profits. Earnings season, the several-week period when companies unveil their quarterly earnings reports en masse, arrived with a bang this time around.

Some early disappointments, particularly among technology stocks, have thrown the market into a frenzy. The turmoil is raising questions about whether the bull market that began in late 1990, as measured by the Dow's performance, is finished.

"More and more people are panicking," said Stan Weinstein, publisher of the Professional Tape Reader, a market newsletter. "This is serious, and I think people are starting to wake up to the fact."

While blue-chip stocks rebounded from their lows on the day, the broader market stayed down. The New York Stock Exchange's index fell 1.87 to 336.80, the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index lost 1.42 to 628.38, and the Nasdaq composite fell 8.60 to 1,051.59, less than 2 points above its starting point for the year. The American Stock Exchange index fell 7.83 to 526.60.

A record number of shares changed hands on both the NYSE and Nasdaq. On the Big Board, the 687.9 million shares traded topped the Dec. 15 record of 636.8 million.