Asian stocks track Wall Street gains

(CNN) -- Asian and Pacific stocks held onto modest gains Friday, following Wall Street's 552-point bounce after three days of declines.

Japan's Nikkei index was up 4 percent in afternoon trading, and Australia's All Ordinaries index rose 2 percent. In Seoul, the KOSPI index had a smaller jump, at 0.6 percent. The Shanghai composite index was up 1.2 percent, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was up 3.4 percent.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average swung wildly at times on Thursday. It fell to within 81 points of its 5-1/2-year low. Between the low and the close, the Dow's swing was 870 points -- it was 911 points between the day's high and the day's low.

Meanwhile, the Standard & Poor's 500 index gained 6.9 percent and the Nasdaq composite rose 6.5 percent, both after reaching lows not seen since 2003.

Stocks tumbled each day this week and through early Thursday afternoon. But the sell-off left the major gauges at levels that many market pros think could represent a bear market bottom, at least in the near term.

"As soon as the Dow fell below 8,000, we saw a rush of buying," said Matt King, chief investment adviser at Bell Investment Advisers.

It was the second time the market retested those lows, which were first hit around October 10. The major gauges slumped to around those levels at the end of October and again in mid-November.

"It was very positive," King said. "It seems like we have put a bottom in place."

However, he said there was a possibility that the market could rally for a few months and then retest again. If so, that would be similar to what happened when the last bear market bottomed in 2002 and 2003.

U.S. futures were lower Friday. Futures offer an indication of how markets may open when trading begins in New York.

European markets ended mixed Thursday, with the London FTSE down 0.3 percent and the German DAX up 0.6 percent, even after a report showed that the German economy has fallen into recession. The CAC 40 in Paris was up a bit more than a percent. Watch more about Germany entering a recession »

The picture was also gloomy in the UK as telecoms giant BT announced it was cutting around 10,000 jobs, mainly among agency workers and sub-contractors, The British Press Association said.

The news came as the unemployment rate in the UK reached an 11-year high of 1.82 million, according to official figures released Wednesday. Watch more about Britain's growing economic problems »

In further sign that a global recession is starting to take hold, China announced that its powerhouse manufacturing sector slowed in October.

China's industrial output grew 8.2 percent in October compared to year-ago levels -- a decline in growth of 3.2 percent from September, the National Bureau of Statistics reported.

Elsewhere, a Kuwaiti court has ordered the temporary closure of the country's plummeting stock exchange, The Associated Press reported.

U.S. light crude oil for December delivery was up $1.89 to $58.05 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, cutting higher early gains after a government report showed crude inventories were flat last week but gasoline stockpiles rose more than expected. Oil closed at a 21-month low on Wednesday.

Gasoline prices dipped 2.4 cents to a national average of $2.178 a gallon, according to a survey of credit-card activity released Thursday by motorist group AAA. The decline marks the 57th consecutive day that prices have decreased. During that time, prices dropped by $1.68 a gallon, or 43.5 percent.

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