*On the mend

The just-posted NYT story said the market "showed tentative signs of recovery" and that pretty much sums up a 60-point gain on the Dow so far this morning. As we suspected, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke provided some comfort by telling Congress that the economy has not taken a sudden nosedive and that the financial markets were working well. He's talking about moderate economic growth, which is what Wall Street wants to hear. As for local stocks, it's a mixed bag - still lots of down issues, but nothing like yesterday. And a number of stocks are on the rebound, including Disney (up +2.69%), Countrywide (+1.49%) and Northrop (+0.25%). A bunch of others are either slightly up or slightly down.

*Update: The Dow finished the day up 52, which of course is an improvement over being down 416, but doesn't quite resolve what's going on with the financial markets - especially since Europe and parts of Asia had another tough day. MarketBeat's David Gaffen captures the different opinions about what's going on.

•A bit of succinct advice from Bill King of Ramsey King Securities, who believes the market is headed lower: “You will hear ‘the economy remains healthy’ mantra often in the coming weeks,” he writes. “It always occurs after notable market declines. Sometimes this trite affirmation is correct. When it is wrong it’s very costly.”

•Since 1962 the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index has declined by more than 3% in one day on 43 different occassions. Twenty days later, on average, the market is up 2.6%, according to Citigroup. Looking further out, after 60 days the average increase is 6.02%, and the market has been up 79% of the time.