Cheat Sheet

Bank stocks soared after Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson announced plans to buy up stakes of $250 billion in financial firms, but worries about the economy, particularly consumer spending and the technology sector, dragged down the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes. After an early surge of 400 points after the bank buyout was unveiled, the Dow ended down 76.62 points, or 0.82 percent, closing at 9,310.99, though shares of Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley were buoyed. Meanwhile, the S&P was down 0.53 percent and the technology-heavy Nasdaq slumped 3.54 percent. "Basically the financial system is on life support," Marc Groz, managing member of Topos LLC, told Market Watch of the continued volatility. "We just gave the patient the equivalent of a few hundred volts of electricity and got his heart restarted, but that doesn't mean we can send him home."