Hopes for a Bull Market

Despite a drop and dreary news, signs of resilience on Wall Street

Whatever the calendar may say, for many business people the day after Labor Day marks the start of a new year -- the end of the slow season, a time of fresh beginnings. But this new year opened with a disquieting week of turmoil. As nervous investors continued to convert cash into inflation-proof tangible assets, the price of gold shot up to a wallet-popping $341 an ounce before settling back at week's end to $329. The Dow Jones industrial average, which had been rising since July, plunged 15 points in one day, the largest decline since last December. Other news was also depressing. Wholesale prices rose in August at an annual rate of 15.4%, which portends still higher consumer prices in the autumn, and unemployment climbed during the month from 5.7% to 6%.

Despite these downbeat reports, the Dow Jones industrials revived at week's end, rose seven points on Friday and closed at 874. Amid the glum news, market analysts and money managers are increasingly confident that a new and sustained bull market is shaping up. Reports TIME Correspondent John Tompkins from Wall Street: "The mood is in the air, palpable, something you can feel. To be sure, there are some well-known bears who still radiate gloom and even a couple of bulls who have turned bearish. But the consensus is that no matter how bad things look in Washington, the nation and the world, the market is within shouting distance of taking off on a major rise."

While the flight to gold shows that some investors remain worried about the long-term direction of the U.S. economy, the market decline early last week was considered to be a short-lived emotional response to higher interest rates. These both slow the economy and make bonds relatively more attractive than stocks. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker repeated that he is committed to throttling back the growth of money supply, and that interest rates would therefore remain high as long as the rate of inflation did. Indeed, the banks' prime rate for business loans climbed from 12 1/4% to a banana republic 12 3/4%.

Given these factors, there may have to be quite a bit of pulling and hauling to get that bull market on its feet and charging hard. But optimists point to some fundamental trends that will be bracing for the market and may help stall the gold machine.

Wall Streeters believe that Washington is finally getting fiscal religion and that the political mood is shifting toward stimulating investment rather than consumption. Some steps in that direction were the Revenue Act of 1978, which slashed maximum capital gains taxes from 49% to 28%, and the appointment of the tough-minded Volcker to the Fed. Though a tight money policy temporarily holds back stock prices, it stands to retard inflation in the longer run.

As the economy slides into the much anticipated and presumably salutary recession, the bulls expect that:

> Interest rates, now at or near their peaks, will begin to fall because demands for loans will ease.

> The recession will be fairly mild and brief, and the market will be slowed only temporarily by the crimp that a downturn would put in corporate earnings.

> A brief recession will reduce inflation next year.

Other factors also contrive to make the market look fairly attractive. The last two bull markets started during recessions, after interest rates fell and investors began to sense recovery ahead. Also, stocks now are cheap. Corporate profits have almost doubled in the past four years, but many blue-chip stocks of big, old companies are selling at mid-1975 prices. The increasing number of corporate takeover bids suggests how undervalued they are. The Dow industrials are selling at 93% of book value, the worth of the assets minus the liabilities and divided by the number of shares outstanding. Thus it is much cheaper to buy out a company than start a new one. Stock prices are also depressed relative to alternative investments in tangibles. In the twelve months to June, the value of silver rose 63%, gold 55%, old master paintings 22% and housing 14%; meanwhile, the Standard & Poor's composite stock index posted an undistinguished 5.3% gain.

Another bullish factor is that investors have put a large cache of cash in short-term securities and money-market funds, and it is available to switch into equities when the time is right. This pile has been conservatively valued at $65 billion. Another $4 billion to $5 billion also could come into the market from Europe, where record amounts of cash have been stuffed into short-term securities. The Europeans are waiting to see if the Carter Administration is serious about defending the dollar and beating back inflation by maintaining tight fiscal and monetary policies.

A fairly strong bull market has been under way in the secondary stocks, including those of the smaller oil and gas companies, newer high-technology firms and takeover candidates. While the Dow has been languishing over the past four years -- it was at 840 in September 1975 -- the index of over-the-counter stocks has gone up 94% and the American Stock Exchange index has risen 161%.

The result is that longtime bears are lumbering out of hibernation. Market Analyst David Bostian of Bostian Research Associates, one of the Street's better-known pessimists, is trumpeting that the Dow could reach 2,000 within five years. Schroder Naess & Thomas, which manages $1.3 billion of institutional accounts, decided to increase its stock holdings by at least 25% because it was fearful of missing the market altogether. Explains Research Director John Groome: "We may be premature, but we are going to be there when the market explodes on the upside." That is widely expected to occur when inflation, interest rates and the dollar show signs of moving in the right direction. As Christopher Johnson of Lloyds Bank in Britain says of Wall Street's future: "There is a boom market out there, but not for a few more months.''

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