Fed's low rates pledge supports global stocks

A pledge by the Federal Reserve to keep extremely small interest rates for another couple of years has calmed investors' jitters, sending stock markets approximately the world higher Wednesday, The Fed's surprise announcement Tuesday that it would likely stay its Fed funds rate at near zero percent through 2013 to help the ailing U.S. economy help Wall Street surge late in the session — the Dow Jones industrial average rallied 6 percent just in the last hour of trading, one of the biggest turnarounds ever seen.

That continued into the Asian and European trading sessions, even though traders remained nervous after the market turmoil of recent weeks, which has sent several global markets officially into bear market territory — falling 20 percent from recent peaks, "There is an consequence of technical rebound but it is too early to say that the crisis is in excess of, or that's the end of the crash," said Olivier de La Ferriere, a fund manager at KBL Richelieu in Paris.

Wall Street was poised to give up a few of Tuesday's late gains — Dow futures were down 0.6 percent at 11,123 even as the broader Standard & Poor's 500 futures fell an equivalent rate to 1,165.Worries over the U.S. economic recovery include been building over the past couple of weeks ever since the government revealed so as to the world's largest economy has been growing far more weakly in the initial half of 2011 than economists expected.

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