Investors are putting behind them one of Wall Street's most tumultuous weeks in the hope that government plans to take the bad assets of ailing financial firms off of their balance sheets will help stem the year-long credit crisis.
"It was the booster shot that the market was looking for," Owen Fitzpatrick, head of the U.S. equity group at Deutsche Bank, said of the government's measures. "Next week, people will want to get more details on how this whole thing is working then we'll start looking at economic numbers again."
As markets went into freefall over the past week, members of Congress, along with the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, hammered out plans to enact an emergency rescue package for a financial system that had reached full-crisis mode.
On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) jumped 368.75 points to end at 11,388.44. The market had already rallied Thursday in anticipation of the move and of measures aimed at protecting the stocks of 799 financial firms.
Over those two sessions alone, the Dow rallied 778 points, or 7.3%, marking its biggest two-day point gain in eight years.
A long-awaited plan
