Echoes of Confidence

For those businessmen concerned about the U.S. economic mood midway in 1957, a prime indication of the nation's confidence came last week from Wall Street. After floundering aimlessly over the last fortnight, the stock market surged forward, shrugging off all reports of soft spots and vacation shutdowns, the long holiday weekend and other normally depressing factors. In the kind of selective trading that has become the trademark of 1957's bull market, investors sent International Business Machines up 21 points in two days to a new high of 358; Alcoa went to 101 for a 21% gain over the year's low, Revlon to 32 for a 34% gain; while California's Superior Oil jumped 145 points in four days to $1,695. All told, stocks on the Dow-Jones industrial average wound up the week 13.60 points higher at 516.89 for a new 1957 peak and within 5 points of the 521.05 record set last year.

Wall Street's optimistic mood was reflected in a survey taken by Dun & Bradstreet of the presidents* of 110 top U.S. corporations with total assets of $27 billion. Not one of the presidents saw a recession coming in 1957. To the contrary, three out of four were confident that no major depression or recession will occur within the next ten years, and all but five of the rest ruled out the possibility of recession until 1960 or later. As for their individual prospects, the presidents predicted sales increases in the next ten years ranging from 26% to 300%.

*Among them: Alcoa's I. W. Wilson, Armco Steel's R. L. Gray, Armour's F. W. Specht, Crucible Steel's Joel Hunter, Firestone's Raymond C. Firestone, IBM's Thomas J. Watson Jr., Motorola's Robert W. Galvin, Radio Corp. of America's John L. Burns, Tidewater Oil's D. T. Staples, Westinghouse's Gwilym A. Price.

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