After a volatile day which saw a 130-point swing in the Dow industrials, Wall Street stocks finished slightly higher thanks to a last-minute burst of buying.

As the afternoon progressed, the decline in stocks slowed and in the final minutes of trading, a burst of buying helped stocks bounce back to close slightly higher.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers by 1,555 to 1,271 on the New York Stock Exchange, with 569 unchanged.

NYSE volume totalled 530.47 million shares, against 587.23 million in the previous session.

The Standard and Poor's 500-stock list rose 2.75 to 924.77, and the NYSE composite index rose 1.24 to 477.66.

The Nasdaq composite index rose 3.25 to 1,586.65, and the American Stock Exchange composite index rose 0.67 to 640.39.