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. ...