Thanks

Wall Streeters have grown superstitious about holidays, and with good reason. The crash that ended 1946's bull market followed the long Labor Day weekend. The Memorial Day weekend in 1949 brought another shakeout. But last week the stock market exorcised the hex. In a buying surge the day before Thanksgiving, stocks started up, and kept right on going after the holiday.

Cheered by talk of an early end to the Korean war and fading chances for the excess profits tax in the lame-duck session of Congress (see above), the Dow-Jones industrials rose to 235.47 (up 4.8 points in a week), the highest since the autumn of 1930. The rails rose to 71.06, highest since 1931. The New York Herald Tribune's closely watched average of 100 stocks finally broke through its 1946 bull market high of 137.45, and reached 137.63, also the highest since 1931.

But if peace talk was good for stocks, it was bad news for war-inflated commodities. At week's end grains, wool, hides and cocoa went tumbling in the futures market. So did cotton, which a few days earlier had reached its highest price (44.14-c- a Ib.) since the Civil War. The Dow-Jones futures index plunged 5.71 points, a record break for a single day, and lowest since Nov. 4.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.