Over the Fence

After weeks of indecisive pawing & snorting, Wall Street's bull market this week jumped over the fence. Prodded by fat earnings, generous dividends and a spate of stock splits (General Motors, Philco, Container Corp. and a rumored split by Chrysler), stocks went bouncing up in the opening session this week. The Dow-Jones industrial average reached 228.94, thus breaking through the previous bull market high of last June and climbing to the highest point since September 1930.* Railroad stocks, which had been pacing recent market advances, also rose; their Dow-Jones index was the highest since August 1931. One gold-plated performer: the Nickel Plate Railroad which, after a 19-point gain last week, shot up another 20 1/2 points to 188.

Less spectacular, but more impressive to traders, was the performance of blue-chip General Motors, which gained 1 7/8 points to set a new alltime high at 99 7/8. Chrysler did even better, gained 3 1/2 points. Since the market had now broken through all previous "resistance points" (i.e., levels at which stocks had been bought at higher prices), beamish Wall Street bulls thought there would be more climbing.

*Highest point of the 1929 bull market: 381.17.

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