‘Plunge protection' behind market's sudden recovery

``The details of last Wednesday morning are these: At the same time the Dow was off 350 points, the S&P index was down 43.80 points, That was an enormous decline in just 11 minutes of trading and it was an indication that Wall Street was not having a good day. Then, someone (or something) started buying S&P futures contracts en masse. Twenty-one minutes later, the S&P index had regained 30 of those lost points and was back at 1,861.''