The stockmarket reaction whose appearance Wall Street had been waiting for last week blithely appeared. After a fortnight's drifting at about the same level, on volume about half that of booming June and July, prices dropped for six successive days. At week's end all gains since July 2 had been erased; from the August 6 recovery high of 145.67, Dow-Jones industrial averages plopped to 136.21.
Commentators generally passed this off as a "technical correction," Wall Street's way of saying that prices which had gone ahead faster than Recovery were dropping back to fall in line with the industrial trend. Meanwhile, business...