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Friday, October 10, 2008
Dow Industrials Briefly Turn Positive After 700-point Plunge
Nick Godt
MarketWatch Pulse
NEW YORK -- The Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly returned to positive territory after plunging nearly 700 points in the first minutes of trading Friday. In what remained extremely volatile trading, the Dow was last down 147 points at 8,431. The blue-chip average first plunged 697 points to a low of 7,882, breaching the 8,000 mark for the first time since April 1, 2003. "There's a little bit of buying going on," said Paul Nolte, director of investments at Hinsdale Associates. "But is it over? We won't know for a couple of months," he said. "The market is cheap if you look over five years, the problem who knows what will happen next week." The S&P 500 index was down 6 points at 903, while the Nasdaq Composite was down 0.60 points at 1,644.
Copyright © 2008 MarketWatch, Inc.
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A specialist is a member of a stock exchange who works as an auctioneer for a specific stock and/or stocks. It can be an individual, partnership, corporation or group of firms.
The specialist works to maintain a "fair and orderly market" for respective stocks, matching up buyers and sellers by displaying the best "bid" and "ask" prices at its trading post. If buys are not equal to sells, the specialist evens the scale by buying or selling shares, accordingly. However, they cannot make their own transactions until all investor orders have been placed.
Gauging supply and demand, the specialist sets an opening price for the stocks in its domain. If a price has not been set by the time the market opens, the specialist can delay that particular stock's opening.
Specialists make money off the "spread," which is the difference between bid and ask prices on orders.
