U.S. stocks went on a roller-coaster ride Friday, clawing their way back from a sharp decline before a late rally ran out of steam.

Two of the three major U.S. averages finished in the red.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dived 600 points in early trading and charged up 300 points in the afternoon before closing down 73 points, or 0.9 percent, to 8,506. The Standard & Poor’s 500 dropped 0.9 percent to 902. But the tech-heavy Nasdaq eked out a 0.3 percent gain to 1,650.

Panic selling, however, continued in foreign bourses from the established markets of Western Europe to the emerging markets of South Africa and Croatia.

Across Europe investors dumped equities, pushing the broad-based Dow Jones Euro Stoxx 50 down 7.9 percent to 2,422. The UK’s FTSE 100 plunged 8.9 percent to 3,932, and Japan’s Nikkei 225 plummeted 9.6 percent to 8,276.

In emerging markets, the Croatia Zabreb Crobex index slumped 10.2 percent to 2,209 and the FTSE/JSE Africa All Shares index lost 3.1 percent to 20,595. Equity markets in Namibia, Botswana, and Qatar were among the few that gained ground.

Technology stocks closed mixed. Apple, which is poised to unveil a new crop of notebooks, was among the upside leaders, gaining 8.3 percent to $96.04. Wireless equipment maker LM Ericsson climbed 5.8 percent to $6.53, and Motorola tacked on 8.1 percent to $4.93.

Losers included Microsoft, which tumbled 3.6 percent to $21.50, and Blackberry maker Research In Motion, whose shares fell 6.4 percent to $55.28.

President Bush, in a Rose Garden address Friday morning, acknowledged that Washington’s efforts won’t immediately calm the markets, but he said the government is “aggressively” using the “wide range of tools at our disposal.”

He chronicled the government’s efforts, including the Federal Reserve’s cut in interest rates and injection of hundreds of billions of dollars in liquidity, but acknowledged that investors must regain confidence.

“Anxiety can feed anxiety,” he said.

His remarks came in advance of a weekend meeting in Washington of the Group of Seven, a collection of the finance ministers and central bankers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and United States.

In a research note, Argus Research analyst Kevin Calabrese said the “market continues to be driven by fear as the lack of credit flow affects economic projections, compounding an already volatile mix of falling confidence, profits and valuations.

“While technical and even valuation indicators may suggest that a large pent-up demand for equities could be released at any time, the longer the current market turmoil drags out the harder it may be to coax some of this cash in from the sidelines,” he said.

In Europe, panic selling in financial issues sent averages down sharply as Royal Bank of Scotland lost 19.4 percent and Barclays dropped 15.7 percent. Also losing ground was wireless provider Vodafone, which tumbled 9.5 percent.

Germany’s DAX 30 shed 7 percent to 4,544 and France’s CAC 40 slid 7.7 percent to 3,176.

In Asia, major industrial companies like Mitsubishi and Toshiba led Japan’s Nikkei to a whopping 881 point, or 9.6 percent loss. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng and Singapore’s Straits Times indices also took precipitous falls, losing 7.2 percent to 14,797 and 7.3 percent to 1,948 respectively.