Updated at 4:53 PM
Wow. What a day. The Dow was doing well all day and then at the end it really took off. The net result is a gain of more than 900 points. That's the largest one-day move in either direction. Percentage-wise it went up more than 11 percent, ranking it as one of the top five days of all time.
Just about every retail REIT gained ground today as well with about half a dozen or so gaining 10 percent or more. PREIT was the biggest gainer, jumping 19 percent today. General Growth was also up big gaining 17 percent and moving from $4.82 per share to about $5.60 per share.
The results were similar around the globe with stock markets in many countries posting huge gains. I guess people really like the plan that the G7 and that Secretary Paulson have come up with to finally stabilize the financial markets. We can only hope that these gains hold and that things continue moving up. Given how volatile things have been, however, I have a bad feeling that we're not quite out of the woods just yet. Most alarmingly, the TED Spread, the difference between the interest rates for three-month U.S. Treasuries contracts and the three month Eurodollars contract, didn't move much today and remains at 4.57. In normal times that spread is less than 50 basis points.
Update: It occurred to me that even though the stock market was open today, the bond market was not. That could be a reason the TED spread didn't move as much. We'll have to keep an eye on it tomorrow. If there's signs of relief there, perhaps we'll get over the hump in the credit crunch and things will begin easing a bit.