Financial Notes
CHEERFUL MARKETS
IT is rather a nice question whether the height of the holiday season must be regarded as coinciding with the beginning or the middle of August. It is true that the exodus on the Saturday preceding the Bank Holiday probably constitutes the heaviest traffic movement of the year, but for many it is a case merely of the two days' holiday, while not a few of the leading dealers in the stock markets do not absent themselves from the House until from August 12th onwards. At all events, quite a fair amount of business has taken place during the first week of August this year, and, on the whole, the tone has been distinctly cheerful. Moreover, while high-class investment securities have held their own quite well, a rather surprising feature—having regard to the period of the year—has been the tendency for business to revive in some of the speculative industrial descriptions, such as the Gramophone group and artificial silk shares. As regards the former, there has been a revival of the old stories of some huge combine, and neither in gramophones nor gramophone records, nor in artificial silk shares, does there' seem to be any alarm at present as to the effect of increasing competition. In fact, nowadays, we seem to live in conditions when, as soon as competition becomes acute, yet another combine is formed, and further profits are made on appreciation in share values. All the same, there must be a limit to such combines, and there is the danger of the investor finally suffering through over-capitaliza- tion quite as much as through the effects of competition.
Previous page
