NEW YORK — A late recovery on Wall Street wiped out most of the stock market’s losses Thursday, leaving the Dow Jones industrial average down just 25 points.
The Dow had been down as much as 177 points but came back sharply in the last 20 minutes of trading.
Many insurance stocks fell sharply after the Supreme Court upheld most of President Barack Obama’s health-care law. The stocks of hospital operators rose. The ruling upheld the central provision of the law, a requirement that almost all Americans carry health insurance.
There were varying explanations for the late comeback on the stock market.
European leaders were holding their first day of summit talks to address the region’s sluggish economic growth and collapse of investor confidence in the finances of weak countries such as Greece and Portugal.
There wasn’t any concrete or official plan to emerge from the meeting, but rumors swirled that the European Central Bank could cut interest rates, and that European leaders were becoming more conciliatory, rather than just confrontational, as they worked on how to prop up troubled countries that are too big to bail out, such as Spain and Italy.
Bank stocks erased much of their losses in late trading. JPMorgan cut its loss in half. The stock was down as much as $1.93 but ended with a loss of 90 cents at $35.88. It was still the biggest loss among the 30 stocks in the Dow average.
The New York Times reported that its loss from a complex trade that went wrong could swell to $9 billion, much larger than the bank has acknowledged. The bank had said previously the loss was $2 billion but could get larger.
The Dow Jones industrial average ended down 24.75 points at 12,602.26.
Other indexes also cut their losses. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 2.91 points to end at 1,329.04, and the Nasdaq composite fell 25.83 points to 2,849.49. Both indexes had been down more earlier.
