NEW YORK (AP) - Wall Street had its best day of the year.
The U.S. stock market surged on Wednesday, erasing a steep loss from the day before. Investors were reacting to minutes from the Federal Reserve's latest policy meeting, which showed that the central bank wants to keep interest rates extremely low for the time being.
"There's a lot of pressure on the Fed right now, so this was a big vote of confidence from investors," said J.J. Kinahan, chief strategist at TD Ameritrade.
The Dow Jones jumped 274.83 points, or 1.6 percent, to 16,994.22. The Standard & Poor's 500 index added 33.79 points, or 1.8 percent, to 1,968.89 and the Nasdaq composite rose 83.39 points, or 1.9 percent, to 4,468.59. All three indexes had their biggest point and percentage gains of 2014.
The jump was the latest whipsaw day for the stock market. Only the day before, the Dow plunged 273 points on fears that the global economy was slowing. Wednesday's gains only made up for what investors lost on Tuesday.
Volatility has picked up sharply in U.S. stocks in recent days. Dow has had moves of 200 points or more five times in the last 10 days. There have only been 10 other days this year when the index has made moves of that magnitude.
Market watchers have been warning for some time now that the market was due to have more volatility, particularly with economic weakness developing in Europe and Asia and with the Federal Reserve on track to end a bond-buying stimulus program later this month. Analysts say investors should expect more big moves in coming weeks.
"I don't think this is going to end until the Fed's meeting in October," said James Liu, a global market strategist at JPMorgan Funds. "The market is in a tug-of-war between the slowdown in international economies and the strong economic numbers here in the U.S."
The stock market moved between gains and losses for most of the day, then surge in the last two hours of trading after the Fed released its minutes at 2:00 p.m. Eastern time.