Rally may be another part of roller-coaster week

THE US stock market finished one of the wildest weeks in years with modest losses, as bank executives tried to rally investor confidence.

It was the kind of week when oil futures crashed to their lowest levels since 2003 and registered their biggest gain since 2009 - all in the space of 24 hours. Global banks such as Deutsche Bank traded below the levels during the aftermath of Lehman Brothers, when complete failure of the banking system was an imminent possibility and then added billions of dollars to their value in a single session.

Now, the question is whether Friday's euphoria put an end to the panic, or was just another part of it.

At its lows of the week, the broad Standard & Poor's 500 was down nearly 15 per cent from its 2015 peak. The Nasdaq Composite entered bear-market territory, more than 20 per cent from its record high. Stocks only bounced back late in the week after Deutsche Bank chief executive John Cryan launched a US$5.4 billion purchase of the bank's own debt, an effort to prove there was nothing to fear. Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, the largest US bank by assets, cast a similar vote of confidence by purchasing 500,000 shares. Both banks surged on the rep…