Recommended

Stocks Get Boost From Italy Budget Deal After Turbulent Session

Updated: 4:16 p.m. ET

Wall Street experienced a slight rally Friday as investors' hopes were lifted on news on Italy's handling of its budget crisis.

At the close of Friday's trading session the Dow Jones Industrial Average showed a gain of 60.93, or 0.54 percent, and stood at 11,444.41 points.

Get Our Latest News for FREE

Subscribe to get daily/weekly email with the top stories (plus special offers!) from The Christian Post. Be the first to know.

The slight gain from Thursday's bleed is credited to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who promised today that his country would balance its budget by 2013. Italy had originally been expected to address its finances by 2014.

Berlusconni made the announcement during an emergency meeting prompted by investor fears of a spreading global crisis, with Italy as one of the countries expected to next encounter an economic collapse.

Italy is Europe's third-largest economy.

"The somewhat stabilizing news out of Europe is allowing us to bounce from very oversold levels," Tom Donino, co-head of trading at First New York Securities, told the Wall Street Journal.

The market had also experienced a slight gain earlier this morning when the Labor Department released the latest unemployment report, but the rally did not last long.

The economy gained 117,000 new jobs in July and the unemployment rate dipped from 9.2 percent to 9.1 percent, according to the report.

Market analysts had predicted that the report from the Labor Department could trigger another sell-off, which would mean more trouble for an already struggling market.

Stocks not only took a beating on Wall Street Thursday, but the panic triggered sell-offs around the world as European and Asian investors were also concerned about a poor economic outlook for the global market.

At the close of the bell Thursday, the DJIA was down 512.76 points, or 4.31 percent, settling at 11,383.68. The loss managed to erase all of the DJIA's gains for the current year. The loss was also the greatest for Wall Street since the 2008 economic crisis.

Not all the stocks hit hard on Thursday managed to make gains in Friday's trading.

Here's a look at how some the market's top movers and shakers performed:

GOOG - Google Inc (579.04, +0.26%)
AAPL - Apple Inc (373.62, -0.99%)
GE - General Electric Company (16.51, +0.24%)
F - Ford Motor Co (10.84, -0.18%)
C - Citigroup Inc (33.44, -3.94%)

Was this article helpful?

Help keep The Christian Post free for everyone.

By making a recurring donation or a one-time donation of any amount, you're helping to keep CP's articles free and accessible for everyone.

We’re sorry to hear that.

Hope you’ll give us another try and check out some other articles. Return to homepage.