U.S. markets zigzag

Wall Street surged late in the day to close higher, after the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose as much as 56.9 points and dipped as much as 45.83 earlier on.

The blue chip index closed up 21.89 points at 7,895.66. The technology-heavy Nasdaq closed at 1,663.77, up 17.52 points. The high for the day was an 18.37-point rise.

The Dow zig-zagged early in the morning, then hovered at a loss of between 10 and 20 points before surging to close higher.

The Dow edged up today on the heels of yesterday's 216-point slump, which interrupted four straight days of gains.

Most overseas markets also fell today, with the exception of Japan Nikkei, which rose almost 1 percent or 123.98 points to 13,983.12. Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 1.72 percent or 130.61 points to 7,445.96. European markets were getting slammed across the board, with Germany's DAX closed down 1.52 percent or 70.93 points at 4,598.58.

One tech stock that fared particularly well was Accelr8 Technology, a Year 2000 software-tools company. The company's shares closed the day up 1.5 points at 5.1875--a 40.68 percent gain. The stock has traded as high as 28.25 and as low as 2.125 during the past 52 weeks.