Market report cusTos
As the stock market moves higher and highbt, breaking records - daily, the view begins to spread that it must- go higher still. Those who cannot see why prices have gone as far as- they have cannot, a fortiori, see where they can be expected to stop. That kind of reasoning is often a bad sign. If the market looked dan- gerously high—as it did—when it was thirty points lower on the Ft index, it still look dangerously high now. At such moments the traditional advice is to Weed out one's holdings.
One prop for the market has doubtless been the successful launch of Slater, Walker's Inv= unit trust, which pulled in £8,184,414—a recent. Slater, Walker's expertise in special situations has earned a constant following. One situation Which the company is believed to be looking at is Crittall, Hope, builders'- suppliers and eh- gineers with a stock market valuation of £16.2 million. This might chime with the Slateir, Walker company E. J. Austin. Like the current acquisition Keith Blackman, Crittall, Hope makes air ventilation equipment. The shares now stand at 13s 81d, at which price they repre- sent 261 times .earnings—a rating which shows the speculative interest already being taken.
This week's big bid has come from-Unilever, which has put a price-tag of £60 million on Smith and Nephew. The market assumes that that is in the nature of a sighting shot. The deal. may be clinched at a higher level, or another bidder might appear—though Courtaulds, Which looks the natural one, may be lying low for a while. There is no doubt what Smith and Nephew shareholders should do at the moment: they should sit tight.
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