Stocks make big jump Wednesday morning through afternoon amid hopeful economic signs

Stocks rallied on Wednesday morning into the afternoon, wiping out significant losses while being bolstered by tentative optimism on the part of a federal reserve chief.

Both the S&P and the Dow gained around 1.5% on Wednesday, with the NASDAQ seeing even an bigger jump of 2.6%. 

The turnaround marks a whipsaw reversal from several days of declining numbers. Stocks began a downward slide on Friday and plummeted even more sharply off Monday into Tuesday. 

The jump appeared to be bolstered in part by an optimistic economic assessment from St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard, who told CNBC on Wednesday that he did not believe the U.S. was currently in the grip of an economic recession. 

“We’re not in a recession right now," Bullard told the network's Squawk Box. "We do have these two quarters of negative GDP growth. To some extent, a recession is in the eyes of the beholder."

The Biden administration has offered similar re-assessment of the current state of the economy, claiming that the presence of two straight quarters of economic contraction do not necessarily indicate a recession in spite of that being the historical marker by which recessions are named.

Bullard, meanwhile, cited hard economic data to make that case.

"With all the job growth in the first half of the year, it’s hard to say there’s a recession," he said. "With a flat unemployment rate at 3.6%, it’s hard to say there’s a recession.”