New Look on the Bear

The market had been moving slowly, like a sputtery pinwheel. Last week it made a mild swoosh.

General Motors started the fireworks. On the heels of brighter-than-expected earnings reports from many a big company (TIME, Feb. 10), G.M. announced that it would again pay a 75^ dividend, dropped to 50^ in the first quarter of 1946. Up went G.M.'s stock with a five-point leap. Up, too, went most of the other stocks on the Big Board.

By week's end, with strong support from commodities (zero weather and gloomy spring crop forecasts, plus heavy foreign demand, helped shove March wheat up to $2.20 a bushel at Chicago, highest in 27 years), stock averages stood at new recovery highs. Dow-Jones industrials were up to 184.49, best since last August; the railroad average was 53.42, best since September. Saturday's short-session volume (nearly a million shares traded) was the highest in almost a year.

Noting all this, the New York World-Telegram cried gleefully: "The bear market . . . seems to have taken wings." Few Wall Streeters were that ecstatic. This, some said, was just a natural rebound of stock values to their proper levels. Values had been deflated by pessimism. Now, business was fine. So was the outlook for 1947--especially in view of the lull in labor-management warfare. It was still too early to say that last week's swoosh was anything more than "a good rally in a bear market." But ,even Wall Streeters wondered whether the bear, instead of sprouting wings and flying away, might not be changing into another animal.

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