Wall Street slides in early trading

Wall Street opened lower on Wednesday, despite a rally on Tuesday that followed a Federal Reserve announcement that it would leave interest rates low until 2013.

The New York Times reports that the three main U.S. indexes were all down by more than 3 percent in early trading. The Dow alone fell more than 400 points. According to Bloomberg, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index was down 2.4 percent by 9:40 a.m. in New York, despite a jump on Tuesday that was the biggest in more than two years.

Overall, stocks had rallied 4.7 percent on Tuesday. But by Wednesday morning, "there was no sign that the rally would continue," according to the Times.

Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital, told CNN he expects the roller-coaster-like atmosphere to continue.

"We'll probably see huge moves in both directions, but I think we'll log some gains toward the end of the session, with some of Tuesday's upward momentum," he said.

Kevin Giddis, the executive managing director and president for fixed-income capital markets at Morgan Keegan & Company, told the Times that investors seem lost.

“The market psychology is such that investors no longer seem to know who or what to root for and all that they do know is, according to the Fed, that rates will remain low until the middle of 2013,” Giddis said.

Asian markets had bounced back earlier on Wednesday, though analysts were still urging caution. In Europe, stocks continued to slide, the Times reports:

…markets in Europe fell on Wednesday with the Euro Stoxx 50 index of euro zone blue chips down 0.3 percent and the FTSE 100 index in London up about 0.5 percent in afternoon trading. BNP Paribas, the French bank, fell 5.1 percent, dragging on the European market.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy left a vacation on the French Riviera to meet with officials, the Times said. Finance Minister François Baroin did not announce any new measures when he spoke to reporters after the meeting. Instead, he said the country would try to meet deficit reduction targets “regardless of how the economic situation evolves.”