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A trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday. In the coming weeks, economists will be poring over data to assess whether the tumult in financial markets is weighing on investment decisions and consumer spending.Credit Andrew Burton/Getty Images

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■ At Wall Street’s open, stocks in the United States surged; the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and the Dow Jones industrial average later pared those gains, with both up less than 1 percent at midday.

■ William C. Dudley, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, suggested that he thought September might be too soon for an increase in interest rates.

■ Shanghai stocks swung between big losses and gains on Wednesday, closing down 1.3 percent despite the rate cuts in China.

■ Markets in Europe closed with major indexes showing losses of more than 1 percent.

In Depth

The storm that tore through global stock markets for several days appeared to have abated on Wednesday.

Chinese and European stocks closed down, but United States stock markets were higher at midday.

With investors still confused and concerned about China’s economy, the second largest in the world after the United States’, the apparent lull may not last. And a resurgence of selling could heighten fears that volatility in financial markets will damp economic recoveries that have started in Europe and gained steam in the United States.

More often than not, though, stock market slides do little collateral damage.

“The stock market has to move a lot — and stay there — to have implications for the U.S. economy,” William C. Dudley, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and an influential policy maker within the Fed, said at a press briefing on Wednesday. “What we’re seeing is not a U.S. problem. This is very different from the financial crisis.”

The debate over the consequences of the stock market sell-offs will only intensify as central bankers meet in the coming weeks to decide whether to adjust monetary policy, one of the main drivers of economic activity. Until the current mayhem in the markets, many investors were betting that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates in September.

But on Wednesday, Mr. Dudley suggested that he thought September might be too soon for an increase. “From my perspective, at this moment, the decision to begin the normalization process at the September F.O.M.C. meeting seems less compelling to me than it was a few weeks ago,” he said, referring to the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed panel that steers monetary policy. Mr. Dudley is a member of the committee.

Continue reading the main story When Will the Fed Raise Rates? More than seven years ago the Federal Reserve put its benchmark interest rate close to zero, as a way to bolster the economy. But that policy is about to change.

Stock market corrections — the Wall Street term for a decline of at least 10 percent — come and go, usually with little consequence. And, importantly, they need not signal tough economic times ahead.

“Corrections are generally three times as frequent as recessions,” David Bianco, a strategist at Deutsche Bank in New York, said in an email, referring to the period since 1960. “This time I think the cause isn’t about U.S. recession risk.”

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, a broad measure of the United States market, was up 0.7 percent at midday, and the much narrower Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.8 percent.

Investors sold the 10-year Treasury note, a safe-haven investment in volatile times. Its yield, which moves in the opposite direction from its price, rose to 2.13 percent, from 2.08 percent on Tuesday.

The recent wave of selling was set off in part by China’s surprise devaluation of its currency, the renminbi, on Aug. 11.

Chinese Investors Express Despair

On Wednesday, shares in Shanghai swung between sharp gains and losses before ending the day down 1.3 percent, and they showed no sign that China’s cut in interest rates late Tuesday would lead to a broader rally.

Officials in Beijing took new steps on Wednesday to bring the stock market to heel, saying they were investigating executives from China’s biggest brokerage firm and had arrested staff members from the country’s stock regulatory agency.

Around Asia, other markets were mixed on Wednesday. Stocks in Japan rebounded 3.2 percent, ending a six-day losing streak.

European stocks, which were up sharply on Tuesday, began trading on Wednesday with declines of 1 percent to 2 percent. They made up that ground, then lost it again, with the Euro Stoxx 50-stock index falling 1.5 percent. It was hard to tell how much of that activity might simply be a function of market volatility or an effect of the downward lead of American markets on Tuesday, and how much might reflect actual concerns about some European companies’ dependence on China.

In the coming weeks, economists will pore over data to assess whether the tumult in financial markets is weighing on investment decisions and consumer spending. The sell-off has wiped more than $1 trillion of value from the S.&P. 500, depleting households’ nest eggs and perhaps delaying some spending. And the weakness in stock markets could be a drag on corporations. The recent wave of mergers and acquisitions, for instance, may lose some steam.

Still, steep stock market declines often have little long-term effect on the wider economy. The last time the stock market declined more than 10 percent was in 2011. But the United States economy has mostly grown steadily since then. Instead, stock market corrections can be relatively isolated events that are driven more by stock valuations than fears about the economy.

Mr. Bianco noted that the profits of companies in the S.&P. 500 had been flat for two quarters and were likely to remain sluggish for a while. “I believe that is the cause of the correction,” he said.

China remains a big question mark. Deeper economic woes in China would have a global impact — on American companies like General Motors and Yum Brands, which count China’s rising middle class among their biggest customers; on Australian iron ore exporters and Peruvian copper miners; and on Japanese industrial robot manufacturers and French luxury goods retailers.

Since China’s stock market started plunging in June, after a rally that more than doubled share values in a year, the country’s leaders have been scrambling to prop up the markets. But shares in Shanghai and Shenzhen have continued to plunge. Officials now appear to be tacitly acknowledging the failure of their attempts to rescue shares.

Li Kui-Wai, an associate professor of economics and finance at the City University of Hong Kong, said such measures amounted to “financial socialism.”

“Basically they just try to bail out everything,” Mr. Li said on Wednesday. “The market is unsure about what China can do or will do, other than interfering in it,” he added, referring to the state measures.

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