18 OCTOBER 1968, Page 28

Market report

CUSTOS The market's nerve has again been tested, and has again held. Last Friday the slow decline in the Financial Times index suddenly gathered pace : the index dropped ten points in the first two hours' trading, with jobbers lowering and widening their quotations: it looked for a little while like a major collapse. But buyers began to nibble as the day went on, and this week they have returned in more force, push- ing the index from Friday's 477 to over 490. Good company news—notably from Marks and Spencer—helped: but this level of the market is meant to discount good company news. On the takeover scene, Petgamon, for whom the market predicted a link with British Printing, has instead bid for News of the World.

Some bargain-hunters have appeared among the Australian stocks, which have shown such steep falls from their heady prices of the spring: Great Boulder at 92s 6d/97s 6d, having louched 186s, and Hampton Areas back to 42s 6d from 130s. The rule here should be to stick to the blue chips, and buy per- formance rather than hope. North Broken Hill (63s; year's high point, 93s 9d) has come back as far as many stocks whose present yield is nil and whose future is a gamble. Not that `gamble' need be a term of abuse; but the odds should be right.

Thomas Tilling has come up with a strong interim statement: in the first half of the year group sales rose from 15 per cent and pre- tax profit by 20 per cent. The boom in car sales before the budget helped the vehicle dis- tribution side. Central and District Properties has raised the final dividend from 5 to 5.35 per cent—the maximum increase permitted— on a pre-tax profit £143,042 lower at f976,10I : interest charges on long-term borrowings have risen by almost half a million pounds.