New York - Wall Street Goes Wild on Gov't Rescue, Short-selling Ban, Market Moves 1000 Points In A Week

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New York - This week's wild ride on Wall Street is starting to look like just that — a ride — because the Dow is on track to end roughly where it was last Friday.

So, essentially, you could've taken the week off, and it wouldn't have made a difference.

After being down by nearly 1000 points at one point this week, the rally of the past two days — which may turn out to be the best since the peak of the tech bubble in March 2000 — has put the Dow Jones Industrial Average within about 50 points of where it ended last Friday.

Thursday was Wall Street's best day in six years. Veteran trader Art Cashin, floor director of UBS, said he thinks it was "the most credible rally we’ve seen this year." It "had that stampede effect that I’ve been looking for," Cashin told CNBC.

But today was a different story. Some called it a fake rally due to the SEC's temporary ban on short-selling of 799 financial stocks, effective today, to help protect any future victims of short sellers, who have been criticized in the demise of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and AIG. Short selling occurs when traders borrow a stock, betting it will go down, only to buy it at a lower price.

Cashin said today's rally was probably exaggerated by 30 to 50 percent due to that ban.

The DJ Industrial Average moved up 368 points to close at 11,388.00