Thursday's early afternoon trade: Wall Street ekes out gains as Fed steps in

Wall Street tried to bounce back on Thursday from dramatic losses in the previous session, as policymakers around the world pulled out all the stops to try and stave off a deep and lasting coronavirus-driven recession.
The benchmark S&P 500 swung into positive territory after falling as much as 3.3% earlier in the session. The US Federal Reserve opened swap lines with central banks in nine new countries to ensure the world's dollar-dependent financial system continued to function.
That was the latest in a host of emergency actions taken by the US central bank over the last two weeks, including cutting borrowing costs to near zero and providing billions more for cheap credit.
"We have had some pretty bold moves by the Fed in the last week or two and most of them have had a very short-lived impact on the market so hopefully this one will help," said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab in Austin, Texas.
European Central Bank also pledged late Wednesday to buy 750 billion euros ($820 billion) in sovereign debt through 2020.
US President Donald Trump, in a now regular update for Americans hunkered down in their homes, said there were therapies that he believed could be rolled out quickly, and sounded upbeat on the chances of agreeing hundreds of billions of dollars of aid with Congress.
To be sure, Thursday's gains were small compared to the pounding the main US indexes have suffered in the past month - the Dow erased the last of its gains under President Donald Trump's presidency on Wednesday, while the S&P 500 index lost roughly $8.7 trillion in market value in the past month.
"Active investors are using this as an opportunity to maybe pick up what might be perceived as bargains because nobody's really sure how to value stocks right now," said Robert Pavlik, chief investment strategist and senior portfolio manager at SlateStone Wealth LLC in New York.
At 1:10 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 200.93 points, or 1.01%, at 20,099.85 and the S&P 500 was up 21.40 points, or 0.89%, at 2,419.50. The Nasdaq Composite was up 214.20 points, or 3.06%, at 7,204.04.