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The world's markets were subject to another day of chaos on Thursday as fears over the deteriorating credit outlook took their toll.
But hours before the closing bell in New York, shares on Wall Street staged a dramatic recovery after suffering heavy losses earlier in the day.
The main Dow Jones index closed down 0.12%, or 15.7 points, at 12,845.8. At one point it had shed 340 points, 2.6%.
London's FTSE 100 fell 4.1% at 5,859, with losses in Europe and Asia too.
Concern over the impact of turmoil in the US sub-prime lending market continued to haunt investors, causing the FTSE's biggest one-day percentage fall since March 2003.
The falls came despite the Federal Reserve pumping an extra $17bn (£8.6bn) into the US banking system.
Central banks have been taking such action to try to restore confidence and avoid a credit squeeze.
Over the past week, the Fed has now injected $88bn (£44.3bn), while the European Central Bank has put up 211bn euros ($283.2bn; £142.6bn).
Unknown scale
However, investors appear to remain unconvinced that the action of the central banks will be enough, and more than £100bn has now been wiped off the value of the UK's leading shares alone since last Wednesday.
The problems in the sub-prime mortgage market will linger on for a while
Bart Ingels
Fortis Bank analyst
In Europe, Germany's Dax ended down 2.4% to 7,270 and France's Cac lost 3.3% to 5,265.
The recent financial market volatility has been triggered by the US sub-prime mortgage sector, which offers higher-risk loans to people with a poor credit history.
As US interest rates have risen and the housing bubble has burst, a growing number of sub-prime borrowers have defaulted on their loans.
This has led to extensive financial difficulties for a number of investment funds with heavy exposure to the sector - and triggered fears of a wider financial crisis.
While some estimates say $300bn in loans could be at risk, one of the biggest worries for investors is not knowing the eventual scale of the problem.
"The problems in the sub-prime mortgage market will linger on for a while," said Bart Ingels, an analyst at Fortis Bank, in Brussels.
"Some days it was a little bit better but then negative news came to the fore, and it will go on like that for a while."
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