Investment Notes
By CUSTOS
ERE was a very quiet opening in the stock MERE after the holiday, except for some fall in copper shares on the worsening of the Rhodesian crisis. Few people are prepared to make any important investment decision before the Queen's Speech and the budget. No doubt steel will figure prominently in the former, but it will be a long time before any government money is injected into the market from the nationalisation proposals and, even so, the Chan- cellor may well decide to take over only the equities—perhaps select equities—and leave the prior charges in private hands. I have been look- ing at a series of charts of share prices showing how the various groups have been acting in relation to the all-share index. The strongest per- formance is made by the aircraft group, electri- cal manufacturing (not electronics), machine tools and, strangely enough, tobaccos. Showing signs of recovery are paper and packaging and stores, but chemicals, building materials, contract- ing, electronics, food manufacturing, breweries and household goods are still in a declining trend. Life assurance had showed an upward movement, which must now be brought to a reverse trend on the disturbing report of LEGAL AND GENERAL.
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