Stocks Erase Worst of Losses

Updated from 3:50 p.m. EDT

Blue chips used a late push to overcome steep losses and tech stocks finished well above their session lows Wednesday in New York.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended with a loss of just 0.98 point at 13,675.25. Earlier, it had been down nearly 200. The S&P 500 was off 3.71 points, or 0.2%, at 1515.88, and the Nasdaq Composite gave back 24.50 points, or 0.9%, to 2774.76.

Less-than-perfect results from Amazon.com (AMZN Quote) and a mammoth writedown at Merrill Lynch (MER Quote) had stocks deep in the red for much of the trading day, but a little after 2 p.m. EDT, the market approached its prior session lows and then began to reverse course.

Reporter Mark DeCambre says Merrill's move wasn't shocking

Despite the indices general recovery, both those names remained to the downside. Merrill fell $3.90, or 5.8%, to $63.22 after saying the subprime mortgage mess over the summer forced it to take a $7.9 billion writedown for bad debt.

The firm swung to a third-quarter continuing-operations loss of $2.24 billion, or $2.85 a share, from a year-ago profit of $3.05 billion, or $3.14 a share. Revenue plunged 94% from a year ago to $577 million.

Another soft spot was Amazon. After the close, the Internet retailer beat third-quarter forecasts by a penny as revenue jumped 41% from a year ago. However, gross margin declined when compared with the second quarter, and shares tumbled 12% to $88.73.