Dow regains 33.6

NEW YORK - Stocks rose modestly today, extending a powerful Wall Street rebound that helped steady markets around the world after a steep selloff yesterday.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 33.63 to close at 8,970.20 after swinging from an early 35-point deficit to a 56-point gain that put the blue-chip barometer within 7 points of 9,000.

Advancers led decliners by a 9-to-5 margin on the New York Stock Exchange, with 1,934 up, 1,069 down and 512 unchanged. NYSE volume was 583.85 million shares, down from 681.09 on yesterday.

Most broad-market indexes also recovered from an early stumble.

The Standard & Poor's 500 rose 5.36 to 1,097.59, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index gained 13.52 to 1,794.62. The NYSE composite rose 3.17 to 567.10, and the American Stock Exchange composite gained 4.74 to 713.58. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 5.55 to 455.81.

The price of the Treasury's main 30-year bond was 9/32 point, or $2.81 per $1,000 in face value, by late afternoon, while its yield fell to 5.83 percent from 5.84 percent late yesterday.

With investors again focusing on Asia, there was little reaction to new signs of the U.S. economy's surprising resilience amid the weakening business conditions abroad. The Commerce Department reported today that the U.S. economy expanded at a rapid 4.8 percent annual rate in the January-March period, up from last month's estimate of 4.2 percent.

Corporate profits, however, were 2.2 percent lower in the first quarter than in the final three months of 1997 after dropping 2.3 percent from the third quarter.

Separately, the department also reported that orders to factories for big-ticket durable goods shot up 2.6 percent in April, the biggest gain in five months.