NARROWING AREA OF INVESTMENTS.
Up to this point it will be seen that we have simply noted a general impulse driving money from trade into the Stock Markets. We now, however, have to note a further factor which narrows the probable selection of investments. If it should happen, as it has happened, that circumstances have conspired to make investors now lose confidence in the industrial and speculative sections of the Stock Markets, the area of selection will have been greatly contracted, and, as a consequence, the effect upon the stocks remaining for selection will probably be all the greater. A moment's consider- ation will, moreover, show that there are other cir- cumstances which at the present moment tend to con- tract the area selected by the investor to an exceptional degree. Under ordinary conditions, when the faith of the investor in the more speculative stocks is shaken, attention is turned not merely to British Government Securities and Home Corporation issues, but to such stocks as India Loans, Australian Stocks and Prior Charges of English Railways, all of which, come under what is known as the Trustee group. Political unsettlement in India, the financial and exchange crisis in Australia, and the terrible condition of staple induStries in this country have, however, so dragged down the three, groups of stocks as almost to bring them, for the time being, into the speculative area, and, as a consequence, the forces driving the investor into British Government Stocks have been greatly increased.'
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