13 OCTOBER 1984, Page 22

Best sellers

Has the stock market got itself right — that is, have the brokers and jobbers who have been selling their birthrights got out at the top? Support for that com- plimentary view of the market's judgment came this week, with the figures for the great four-cornered securities house being formed round S. G. Warburg. At all four corners, business has turned flat, and there are warnings of redundancies — not much softened by the promise that those sacked from one corner will be given first con- sideration in the other three. An indepen- dent broker, minding his own small corner, puts the point more graphically (in terms modified for print): 'Yes, we got an order, the other day. Someone told us to push off.'

Christopher Fildes