Dow Enjoys Remarkable Turnaround, Up 402 Points
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Now to the economy, it was a remarkable day today on Wall Street. The Dow Industrials soared 402 points to 9,918, the second largest point gain ever. The tech-heavy Nasdaq jumped 146 points to end at 1,785. Why the spark? From New York tonight, CNNFN's Kitty Pilgrim is with us live. Kitty, we talked about the spark and the bounce; tell us why.</s>KITTY PILGRIM CNN FINANCIAL NEWS: It's an interesting day on Wall Street, Bill, in that we had a flurry of good earnings reports. Now, we've been in the preannouncement season, and up to now, we have had a lot of bad news that companies want to get out of the way. Today, we got good earnings news, and it seems like it was just what investors wanted to hear. Dell said that it would reassure people it would meet first quarter demands; Alcoa, first Dow component to report, beat the Street. We also Yahoo!, which got a buy rating from Lehman, so they had a nice cross-section of stocks, both old economy and new economy, and there were some good earnings out there.</s>HEMMER: So, clearly, there's another question here; can it last? Will it last? What do analysts say about hitting a bottom?</s>PILGRIM: That was exactly the question on everybody's minds today. And because it's the beginning of earnings season, there's still plenty of time for bad news to come out, so many analysts were thinking that perhaps, if they have wait and see, to see if this rally can be sustained. One interesting point is, as much as stocks went up, bonds did not go down as much, and that's an interesting indicator, because that means investors and institutions were not willing to abandon the safety of bonds quite yet.</s>HEMMER: Kitty, quickly, in the 15 seconds we have left, the Fed has talked about so much on Wall Street; what is their role at this point? How are they being watched?</s>PILGRIM: Well, of course, the Fed doesn't react to the stock market, at least not officially; but they do look at business spending and consumer confidence. And all of that is highly dependent on the stock market.</s>HEMMER: Kitty Pilgrim, live in New York, thanks for staying up with us tonight; much appreciated. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com