FINANCE AND INVESTMENT
WITHOUT daring to be confident, I feel moderately hopeful that stock markets are moving into a recovery phase. After being led up the Berchtesgaden path speculators somehow contrived to beat an orderly retreat with the result that by the beginning of this week the sudden blow on the home front scarcely opened any fresh breach in their defences. A momentary shudder in the gilt-edged market was natural and appropriate enough to the political shock of Mr. Eden's resignation, but the Stock Exchange has been in a mood to clutch at the straws of Mr. Chamberlain's near-term appease- ment hopes rather than indulge any of its more long-term fears. In present conditions, with jobbers' books about as bare of stock as is Mussolini's Treasury of cash, even such mild hopefulness is bound to find reflection in a moderate rise in prices.
Investors will have their own views upon the possibilities of appeasement on the Chamberlain-Halifax formula, but I still think they must also keep a watchful eye on American business. President Roosevelt's latest contribution to his recovery programme is a schoohnasterly address, with blackboard illustrations, on the problem of commodity prices. Critics may almost detect the Will Hay touch in his unexcep- tionable proposition that some prices are too high and others too low, but it is something to know that Washington is again, on balance, on the " bull tack." As a cautious investor, I would still be inclined to sit on the fence until American recovery becomes less of a hope and more of a reality, but equally I would not sell good equity shares at this juncture. * * * *
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