Speculative Fervor

When Washington makes major economic moves, Wall Street responds with a spasm of stock trading. Last week, at President Johnson's call to restore tax credits for business investment, the market churned through its most frenzied day in 37 years. When it was all over, stocks made only modest gains, but volume on the New York Stock Exchange ballooned to 14.9 million shares, second only to the 16.41 million shares traded on Oct. 29, 1929. The Big Board's two-year-old high-speed ticker, which flashes stock transactions as fast as the human eye can read, fell behind by a record 27 minutes. In the first hour's speculative fervor, the bellwether Dow-Jones industrial average jumped 13.70 points as buyers bid up the price of airlines, railroads, machine-tool and other equipment makers. But the rally wilted as quickly as it grew, and the industrial index retreated to 848.50 --up a mere 1.90 points for the week.

Though neither bulls nor bears seem in control, the market's hefty volume has turned it into a broker's bonanza. Ten-million-share days were once a rarity (before 1966 there had been only eleven in Wall Street history). This year, the market has not only reached that volume on 28 of its 48 trading days, but has averaged 10,039,572 shares a day--a 33% jump from last year's record daily volume of 7,500,000 shares.

It is a professional's market, with pension funds, mutuals, and merger-bent corporations among the big buyers. Small investors have become a dwindling factor. So far this year, odd-lot trading (blocks of less than 100 shares) has dropped to the lowest percentage of total volume--12.3%--since brokers began keeping track in 1937.

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