The Dow Jones industrial average skidded 187 points, or 1.1 percent, to 16,721 as of 10:25 a.m. Eastern. The blue chip index recently gained 59 points, or 0.4%, to 16457 after earlier being up as much as 193 points.
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The Nasdaq snapped an eight-session losing streak, with the Nasdaq Biotech Index rebounding late, also breaking an eight-day run of losses.
“The fundamental concerns are well founded: we’ve been very anxious about the path of the Chinese economy for some time”, said Paul Markham, global equity portfolio manager at Newton, an asset-management arm of BNY Mellon, who highlighted outsize leverage in the Chinese banking system.
Elsewhere Wednesday, investors took heart from a modest uptick in the price of oil after prices dipped below the $ 30 a barrel mark in US trading hours, sparking concerns about bankruptcy in the energy sector and rattling stocks, bonds, and currencies in oil-sensitive economies. Though stocks didn’t climb to new highs in late afternoon trading, they were able to close near their early morning prices with the Standard and Poor’s 500 gaining 0.78 percent and the Nasdaq Composite up 1.03 percent on the day.
USA stocks have opened higher in the past two sessions, only to reverse course later in volatile trading as investors fretted about a China-led global growth slowdown and sharp turns in oil prices.
Meanwhile oil prices recovered with Brent crude up 1.5% to $32.06 per barrel after reaching a 12-year low and West Texas Intermediate up 0.97% to $31.72 per barrel after falling to its lowest level in over a decade.
All three major indices ended the week with losses of almost 6 percent or more – one of their worst starts to a year in history.
OIL DRAG: Energy and mining companies were trading lower as oil prices continued to decline. Chesapeake Energy fell 30 cents, or 7.3 percent, to $3.87. South Korea’s Kospi added 1.3 percent to 1,916.28.
SOUNDS BAD: Skullcandy plunged 33.8 percent after the headphones maker slashed its 2015 sales projections and said holiday sales were worse than it expected. The euro declined to $1.0920 from $1.0925.
Other leaders included UnitedHealth Group, up 2.4 per cent, and Wells Fargo bank, 2.7 per cent. The Nasdaq crossed 2.1 billion shares.
SECTOR VIEW: Seven of the 10 sectors in the S&P 500 index moved lower. Anthem rose $6.31, or 4.9 percent, to $134.67, while Aetna added $3.04, or 2.9 percent, to $108.11.
Lululemon was up almost 9 percent at $56.62 after the Canadian yogawear retailer raised its fourth-quarter revenue forecast. The stock lost $7.38 to $101.60.
USA stocks are opening higher, led by gains in big technology companies, which have had a rough start to the ye… The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares gained 1%.
OVERSEAS: In Europe, Germany’s DAX fell 0.3 percent while France’s CAC 40 rose 0.1 percent.
The CBOE Volatility Index, often referred to as Wall Street’s fear gauge, fell 7.53 percent to end at 22.47 Tuesday.
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Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 1,600 to 1,470, for a 1.09-to-1 ratio on the downside; on the Nasdaq, 1,417 issues rose and 1,412 fell for a 1-to-1 ratio favoring advancers.
