Wall Street Rallies To Close

The markets opened the week with a strong rally across the board, as analysts and brokers all day struggled to find "the new normal."

The Dow closed up 413.21 points, or more than 4 percent.

The S&P 500 closed up nearly 5 percent and the Nasdaq finished up 3.5 percent.

The markets seemed to respond today to two factors pointing to an unfreezing of the credit markets, the essential problem at the bottom of this crisis:

A) The LIBOR, or London Interbank Offered Rate, the interest rate at which banks lend to each other, is dropping, as banks start to trust each other a little more, and,

B) Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said in testimony this morning that it looks like credit is starting to unfreeze.

-- Frank Ahrens