‘Plunge protection’ behind market’s sudden recovery

Mysterious forces were trying their best, but they couldn’t keep the stock market from swooning Wednesday.

They failed in the morning, despite massive purchases of stock index futures contracts. Within minutes of the market’s opening, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 350 points. Later in the day — after a lot of shocking ebb and flow — the Dow bottomed out with a decline of 460 points.

It was only in the last hour of trading that the market saviors managed to trim the Dow loss to just 173 points. And they succeeded only after Janet Yellen’s private, upbeat remarks about the economy were leaked.

Welcome to a new kind of stock market — one that the average investor should refuse to be invested in.