Traders’ Fears Allayed Shortly After Opening : Mood: Experts expected stocks to head lower. But an upward surge after the opening reassured traders.

Minutes after the opening bell, New York Stock Exchange Chairman William H. Donaldson’s broad grin said it all: This was no Black Monday.

The most nervously anticipated opening of the market since the Gulf War was surprisingly quiet as stocks managed to regain some stability after Friday’s sudden drop.

“The market solidified after the open and calmed everybody down,” said Richard Shubert, an independent member of the NYSE. “It was pretty much business as usual.”

That was no small relief for Donaldson, who was facing the biggest market decline since he took the helm in January. If he had been listening to market analysts over the weekend, he no doubt had heard that stocks were expected to start the day lower. The experts’ main question seemed to be how much lower.

But the video monitors surrounding the main trading floor told a different story as soon as the day’s numbers started flashing. Stocks started out with an upward surge in orderly trading.

Trading at the Pacific Stock Exchange in Los Angeles and San Francisco was active, with volume on the exchange totaling 9.7 million shares, compared to the 1991 average of about 7 million.

But any anxieties on the local trading floors were dissipated in the first hour, as buyers quickly bid up stocks. In fact, the California exchange reached half of its daily average within the first two hours.

Despite the heavy pace, traders were relatively calm at the two California sites because they expected bargain hunters to buoy the market in the wake of Friday’s decline, said Dale Olson, a spokesman for the Pacific exchange.

“We’ve been through major selloffs before,” Olson said. “Most felt that (Friday’s decline) wasn’t that big a deal, considering the state of the economy.”

Although they retreated briefly in the morning and fluctuated through most of the afternoon, prices managed to mount a finishing rally. Still, there was little to cheer about.

Many investors viewed Friday’s massive selloff, which sent the Dow into a 120-point spiral, its fifth worst in history, as a clear sign that the economy remains sick.

Just because stocks stopped falling Monday did not offer assurances that things would improve or even stay stable.

During the weekend, traders couldn’t help but recall an October Friday four years ago, when the Dow dropped 108 points, only to be followed by a loss the next Monday of 508 points. Two years later, in the so-called crashette of October, 1989, stocks plunged Friday the 13th and rebounded strongly the following Monday.

The 1991 episode resembled 1989 more than the crash of ’87.

Before the NYSE went to work Monday, many traders were tense. Overseas markets showed sizable losses in the hours before the Big Board opened. Even though their drops were proportionately smaller than Friday’s in U.S. stocks, no one knew what would happen here.

“There could be a lot of panic out there,” said one exchange worker taking an early morning cigarette break on Wall Street.

Others were not so gloomy.

“The mood looks good. It looks like a good day,” said Freddy Gonzalez, a page at the exchange.

Before trading began, he was obviously one of the bigger optimists. Some experts wondered whether the Dow might fall another 90 points, getting to the market’s theoretical “bottom” level of 2,850 points, which has held up since about the end of the Gulf War.

Just as a precaution, some exchange workers were passing around Monday’s edition of the New York Daily News before the opening. Juxtaposed over a picture of the exchange was the headline: “Don’t Panic.”

Traders gazed at the message and laughed.