By Greg Peel

The Dow closed up 29 points or 0.3% while the S&P gained 0.5% to 1260 and the Nasdaq jumped 0.9%.

Had the Dow closed in the red last night it would have marked nine consecutive losing sessions. The last time that happened was in 1978. It was touch and go in the last hour, but by the close the average managed to fall over the line.

Things looked a lot more dire around 11am, at which point the Dow was down 160 points. The focus right now is on US economic data, and it wasn't getting a lot better in last night's releases.

The US services sector PMI fell to 52.7 in July from 53.3 when economists expected a rise to 53.5. Factory orders, which is a wider measure than the durable goods data, fell 0.8% in June, albeit excluding bulky transport the result was a 0.1% rise.

The global round of service sector PMIs showed Australia up to 48.8 from 48.5, China down to 53.5 from 54.1, the eurozone down to 51.6 from 53.7, and the UK up to 55.4 from 53.9. A mixed bag there, with Australia improving but still in contraction, and the UK showing everyone else up. I believe the biggest growth there was achieved in phone hacking services.

The big number everyone was waiting for in the US, nevertheless, was the ADP private sector jobs report. This number is considered by some to be a leading indicator for the official non-farm payrolls report on Friday, considered by others to be a poor indicator given regular lack of correlation with the payrolls number, and considered by yet others to be a helluva lot more accurate than anything the government could come up with. So take your pick.

ADP reported 114,000 new jobs added in July. Given the weakness of recent economic data, this was not too bad. The Street was forecasting 85,000. But when we consider numbers in March and April were exceeding 200,000, the trend is still not good. Whaddya do? Sell!

There has already been plenty of talk amongst the contrarians this last week or so that Wall Street was looking oversold, and talk that Tuesday was your classic capitulation, so at another 160 Dow points down the cavalry arrived. It was not an easy battle ? there was plenty of choppiness through the day ? but ultimately the buyers claimed a small victory. Is this the bottom?

Experience suggests that markets rarely turn around immediately from big sell-off days. Often there is one or more false-start rallies, and when they fail the mood becomes one not so much of panic but of resignation. There is usually a round of quieter down days and a mood of melancholy before something, not even something that significant necessarily, triggers the next run up. Let's not forget that Ben and his team will be standing there with arms outstretched grasping the safety net.