Signs of panic buying emerged Friday afternoon on the New York Stock Exchange amid a powerful stock-market rally in the final minutes of trade, a day after one of the worst selloffs for equities since mid June. Market internals suggest that investors are buying mightily headed into the weekend. The NYSE Arms Index, a volume-weighted breadth measure, fell to 0.413, with many on Wall Street see declines below 0.500 as suggesting panic buying. The Arms Index is calculated by dividing the ratio of the number of advancing stocks over decliners by the ratio of the volume of advancing stocks over declining volume and the Arms index often falls below 1.000, as the buyers rush into advancing stocks. The S&P 500 index
SPX,
+1.13%
was trading 1.1% higher at 4,370, the Nasdaq Composite [c: COMP] was up 1% at 14,700, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
+1.30%
was up about 460 points, or 1.3%, at around 34,876. All three indexes are heading for record closing highs a day after notching the worst daily drop since June 18. The declines had been at least partly inspired by worries about the economic recovery amid the spread of the delta variant of COVID-19 and as the 10-year
TMUBMUSD10Y,
1.359%
and 30-year Treasurys
TMUBMUSD30Y,
1.991%
hit their lowest yields since February.