NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks sharply pared huge early losses on Friday, as traders took a steep plummet at the open as suggesting that the selling was overdone.
Initially, the Dow had sunk as low as 8 percent and the S&P 500 had fallen more than 7 percent in the first few minutes of trading, before cutting the bulk of those losses.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> was down 252.33 points, or 2.94 percent, at 8,326.86. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.SPX> was down 28.27 points, or 3.11 percent, at 881.65. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.IXIC> was down 25.29 points, or 1.54 percent, at 1,619.83.
"We are extremely oversold right now. Everybody was looking for a hard, hard sell-off at the open and we got it. So this is a classic come-back from a sell-off at the open," said Angel Mata, managing director of listed equity trading at Stifel Nicolaus Capital Markets in Baltimore.
"This is a psychological oversold bounce. Technicals have nothing to do with this."
(Reporting by Ellis Mnyandu and Kristina Cooke; Editing by James Dalgleish)
