Ever since Wall Street's Blue Monday crash, economic sages ranging from mutual fund managers to Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon have been recalling the late John J. Raskob's half-forgotten rule of thumb (TIME. June 1) that even the stock of a promising company should be priced at no more than 15 times the company's per share earnings. If that ratio held, the warning ran, the Dow-Jones industrial average would have to sink to 540. Last week it fell even farther than that; in five days of almost unbroken decline's, it dropped to 539.19, the lowest closing since Oct. 28, 1958.
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