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Nasdaq soars 254

The tech-heavy index notches its
second consecutive record while
the Dow rockets 185

Associated Press

NEW YORK -- Prices rose sharply on Wall Street today, giving the Nasdaq composite index a second straight record point gain, as the stock market extended its rebound from last week's rout.

The Nasdaq's gain of more than 250 points, coupled with its 217.87 point advance yesterday, more than wiped out the 355.49-point plunge the technology-dominated index suffered Friday.

The Dow Jones industrial average, meanwhile, rose 184.91, or 1.75 percent, to 10,767.42 today. Yesterday, the index of 30 blue-chip stocks soared 276.74 points following Friday's record drop of 617.78 points. With today's gain, the Dow has now recovered 461.65 points, or about three-quarters of Friday's plunge.

The Nasdaq rose 254.41, or by 7.2 percent, to close today at 3,793.57. The advance surpassed yesterday's record one-day point gain of 217.87. Today's percentage gain was the second largest on record, behind a 7.34 percent on Oct. 21, 1987.

Today's gains were spread across the market, an improvement from yesterday's performance, in which key indicators soared but more stocks fell in price than rose. Some of the most notable gainers today were the Nasdaq's high-tech stocks that were among the hardest hit last week.

The Standard & Poor's 500 rose 40.17, or 2.9 percent, to close today at 1,441.61. Advancers beat decliners by nearly a 2-to-1 margin on the New York Stock Exchange, with 1,976 up, 1,004 down and 448 unchanged. NYSE volume totaled 1.09 billion shares vs. 1.3 billion yesterday. The NYSE composite index gained 14.60 to 634.81; the American Stock Exchange composite index rose 28.39 to 877.36; and the Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 6.83 to 486.09. The price of the Treasury's main 30-year bond rose 10/32 point, or $3.12 per $1,000 in face value; its yield fell to 5.91 percent from 5.93 percent yesterday.

Wall Street stock analysts said they were impressed by today's advance, which drew support from a rebound in big-name technology stocks including Sun Microsystems, Microsoft and Cisco Systems. But they warned they weren't ready to call the market fully recovered from last week's plunge that was caused by worries about interest rates and fears that high-tech stocks weren't worth the high prices they had commanded over the past year.

Overseas, Asian stocks, which swooned yesterday on worries about the selloff on Wall Street, regained some lost ground today, although Japan's Nikkei fell on worries that any recovery from the global selloff could prove fragile.