U.S. markets close higher

The most volatile week in the history of the Dow Jones industrial average ended with a gentle run upward and likely a few sweat-drenched handkerchiefs. The Dow logged swings of at least 400-points for the first four days of the week, then ended with a gain of 125.71 points, or 1.13 percent, to 11,269.02, just 175 points or 1.5 percent below the start of the week on Monday morning. It took some serious bouncing to find the new level. On Monday, the Dow lost 5.6 percent. It gained 4 percent on Tuesday and lost 4.6 percent Wednesday. On Thursday, the blue-chip index added 3.95 percent. It was the first time in history the Dow has been on that wild a romp, shifting 400 points for four consecutive sessions -- a week so volatile France, Belgium, Italy and Spain joined Turkey and Greece with temporary bans on short selling, deals in which a trader borrows, sells, then buys back stock, making money if the value goes down. Experts said they weren't sure whether the ban would do much to restore order and confidence in the markets. "In the short term it will help calm things down, but if you look at what happened at Lehman during the crisis, it didn't do much," Ion-Marc Valahu, who helps run fund management firm ClairInvest in Geneva, told the BBC. Western countries imposed a ban on short selling in 2008 when Lehman Brothers' collapse prompted the United States and Britain to ban the practice. By close of trading on Wall Street, the Standard & Poor's 500 index added 6.17 points, or 0.53 percent, to 1,178.81. The Nasdaq composite index was ahead 15.30 points, or 0.61 percent, to 2,507.98. The benchmark 10-year treasury note rose 27/32, pushing yields lower to 2.251 percent. In currency shifts, the euro rose to $1.425 from Thursday's $1.4239. Against the yen, the dollar fell to 76.81 yen from Thursday's 76.84 yen, a difficult development for export-driven Japan, which has seen the yen steadily strengthen this week. European stocks rose early Friday and Asian stock prices closed mixed, ending a week of ferocious turbulence and huge paper losses. London's FTSE 100 closed up 3.04 percent, which was on the low side for Europe for the day. The Parisian CAC 40 index added 4.02 percent, while the DAX 30 in Frankfurt, Germany, rose 3.45 percent. In Belgium, the Bel-20 index added 5.5 percent. In Sweden, the OMX index rose 2.42 percent. Tokyo's Nikkei-225 index, which after topping 9,000 points during the day, fell back below that psychological mark, ending down 18 points, or 0.2 percent, to 8,964. On Friday, the Japanese government, citing devastation from the March earthquake and tsunami, cut its growth forecast for this fiscal year to 0.5 percent from its earlier 1.5 percent, but added the gross domestic product in fiscal 2012 is expected to grow more than 2.5 percent as domestic demand rises with post-quake reconstruction picking up. In other Asian markets, Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index also gave up early gains, slipping 25 points, or 0.13 percent, to end the day at 19,620 points. The Shanghai Composite index, however, closed 11 points higher, or 0.45 percent, at 2,593 points. Investors' concerns remained about China's rising inflation that hit 6.5 percent in July. State media reported the yuan hit a record high of 6.3972 against the U.S. dollar Friday on the China Foreign Exchange Trading system. Australia's All Ordinaries gained 34 points, or 0.82 percent, with a closing of 4,238 points. South Korea and Taiwan closed down for the day. Markets in India also closed lower. "Investors are looking for any signs that the United States will be able to avert a double-dip recession," Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott, told CNN. Copyright 2011 United Press International, Inc. (UPI). Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.