September is Good To Wall Street

After a tumultuous and brutal August, the stock market has regained its footing and is within striking distance of the records it set in July.

The upsurge began building a few weeks before the Federal Reserve cut interest rates last week and has come at a time when the news from the housing market continues to remain bleak. Conditions in the debt markets have eased somewhat, but specialists say they remain much tighter than they were earlier this year.

Since Aug. 15, when the stock market hit its lowest point in five months, the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index is up 8.5 percent and the Dow Jones industrial average has climbed 8 percent, coming back within range of its 14,000 peak. The increase has erased much of the decline from late July and the first half of August and left the indexes up modestly for the third quarter, which ends today.

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