Late Rally Saves Wall Street

Updated from 4:19 p.m. EST

Wall Street explored both positive and negative territory in another chaotic round of trading Wednesday, but when the close finally came, the major averages were sitting at their session highs.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 146.24 points, or 1.16%, to 12,735.31, and the S&P 500 rose 18.94 points, or 1.36%, to 1409.13. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 34.04 points, or 1.39%, at 2474.55, its first winning session of 2008.

On the Dow, a 4.8% rise in DuPont(DD Quote) and a gain of 2.9% in shares of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ Quote) offset a 2.2% decline in General Motors (GM Quote).

Among tech names, Google (GOOG Quote), Apple (AAPL Quote), Cisco (CSCO Quote), Qualcomm (QCOM Quote) and Nvidia (NVDA Quote) jumped 3.2% or more.

Volatility has been the norm in the market for some time, with the major averages fluctuating almost daily between red and green, sometimes multiple times, and it was the story once again.

On the New York Stock Exchange 5.23 billion shares changed hands, as advancers topped decliners by a 6-to-5 margin. Volume on the Nasdaq reached 2.79 billion shares, with losers edging winners 8 to 7.

Initial buying interest that followed Monday's selloff gradually gave way to more gloomy news, this time partly courtesy of Goldman Sachs, who forecast that the domestic economy will slip into a recession this year. The firm believes gross domestic product will shrink by 1% annualized in the second and third quarters, and it predicted that the Federal Reserve will gradually cut rates to 2.5% in order to get growth back on track.