Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange surround the post that handles Wells Fargo, after the closing bell Friday. Buyers returned to Wall Street after two days of heavy losses, mindful of the economy's growing problems but attracted by stocks' lower prices.

New York ? Buyers returned to Wall Street on Friday after two days of heavy losses, mindful of the economy’s growing problems but attracted by stocks’ lower prices. Analysts said the advance was to be expected as Wall Street experiences a rocky recovery from October’s devastating selling.

The major indexes jumped more than 2 percent, including the Dow Jones industrial average, which rose nearly 250 points in light trading. For the week, the Dow and broader benchmarks like the Standard & Poor’s 500 index lost about 4 percent after surging 10 percent or more last week.

Friday’s trading was a mini-version of the market’s performance over the past two weeks, with investors upbeat, then realizing there was little basis in reality for their resurgent confidence, then changing their minds again.

The market briefly came off its highest levels of the session after President-elect Obama reiterated at a news conference that there is a great deal of hard work to be done to restore the economy to health. Investors had optimistically sent prices higher, only to temporarily pull back when Obama underscored what they already know: that the economy’s problems won’t be easily solved.

George Shipp, chief investment officer at Scott & Stringfellow, said Obama appeared to be trying to telegraph to the market not to expect too much immediately. Obama, noting that he has until January before taking office, said he will work to support an economic stimulus plan and will seek ideas for helping the auto industry.

“My expectation is that he lowers the bar and buys the time,” Shipp said. “Certainly there is no reason to create any undue expectations right now.”

The market fluctuated after Obama spoke, then righted itself to close near its best levels of the day.

Hank Smith, chief investment officer at Haverford Investments said the market’s turns aren’t a surprise.

“I think it’s absolutely part of the bottoming process,” Smith said. “The Oct. 10 low has been tested again a number of times.” The blue chips hit an intraday low of 7,882.51 on Oct. 10.

Friday’s economic and corporate news reminded the market that the country could be in for a deep and protracted recession.

The Labor Department said the nation’s employers cut 240,000 jobs in October, hurtling the U.S. unemployment rate to a 14-year high of 6.5 percent. The market had expected employers to cut 200,000 jobs and for the unemployment rate to rise

6.3 percent.

Meanwhile, Ford Motor Co. reported a $129 million third-quarter loss and announced plans to cut more than 2,000 additional white-collar jobs. General Motors Corp. said it lost $2.5 billion in the quarter and warned it could run out of cash in 2009.

Although the day’s news was on its face worse than expected, investors were drawn by prices beaten down the past two sessions and some relief that the reports weren’t more grim.

“We’re coming off of a very oversold market that had already braced itself for bad news out of Detroit and certainly bad economic data in terms of the labor report,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Avalon Partners.