By BERNARD CONDON
and MATTHEW CRAFT
Associated Press
NEW YORK —
Traders and Specialists work the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange after the opening bell, on Thursday, Sept. 6, 2012. (AP Photo/David Karp)
A long-anticipated plan to support struggling countries in the European Union provided the necessary jolt, and the gains were extraordinarily broad. All but 13 stocks in the S&P index were up. European markets surged, too. “There’s just a sea of green,” said JJ Kinahan, TD Ameritrade’s chief derivatives strategist. “It’s pretty fun.”
At the start of 2008, the U.S. economy was already a month into recession, though most people scarcely knew it at the time. The S&P had recently hit an all-time high, and the unemployment rate was 5 percent, compared with the current 8.3 percent.
Then, in March 2008, the investment bank Bear Stearns collapsed under the weight of bad mortgage bets, and investors began to sell. In September, the full financial crisis took hold as Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, banks stopped lending to each other and investors began dumping stocks in earnest. By March 2009, the S&P had dropped 57 percent from its high to hit a 12-year low of 676.
Since then, the index has been on an impressive if often bumpy climb. Helping to power it was unprecedented support from the Federal Reserve, which critics say has reignited a dangerous gambling spirit among professional investors, and record profits at big U.S. companies. Although stocks have rebounded, the broader economy is still lagging. But Barry Knapp, head of U.S. equity strategy at Barclays Capital, said stocks tend to anticipate the future economy rather than reflecting current conditions. So the signs are good.
