Business: If & And

Like Pioneer IV, Wall Street’s bull sped into uncharted territory last week. As trading on the New York Stock Exchange boiled up between 3,900,000 and 4,800,000 shares daily, Dow-Jones industrials hit a peak of 611.87, or 175 points above the 436.89 low of a year ago. Not even tough news could jolt it. The index gave up only 2.35 points on the Federal Reserve Board’s discount-rate hike (see above), closed at 609.52.

Such a broad and bright market led many an investor to play the old stubby pencil game of “How much would I have now if . . .” If he had bought 100 shares of some stocks, even at the 1929 pre-crash highs, he would now have a pile. Examples, counting stock splits and dividends, but not counting cash dividends and rights, of how each share multiplied: Stock ’29 High (One Share) Last Week Number of Shares Now $ Total Value

Dow. Chem. 495 86 110.8 9,529

IBM 255 527 17.3 9,117

Kodak 264¾ 153¼ 7.7 1,180

Alcoa 539½ 83⅛ 12 998

G.E. 403 80¾ 12 969

Du Pont 231 225½ 4 902

Goodyear 154½ 129¾ 4.6 597

Zenith 62½ 233 2 466

Standard (N.J.) 83 52¾ 6.7 353

G.M. 91¾ 46⅛ 6 277

But an investor could also have lost on some blue chips. For example:

Stock ’29 High (One Share) Last Week Number of Shares Now $ Total Value

A.T. & T. 310½ 241½ 1 241½

Western Union 272¼ 36½ 4 146

N.Y. Central 256½ 26⅝ 1 26⅝

Nat’l Biscuit 236¼ 52 2.5 130

Chrysler 135 54½ 2 109

RCA 114½ 51¼ 1 51½

Pennsy R.R. 110 16½ 1 16

Woolworth 103⅞ 55 1 55

The man who had the courage to invest regularly in blue chips all during the Depression and since could hardly have escaped making a fortune. Last week, to thousands of curious investors, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith proved this in a booth in Manhattan’s Grand Central Station. There a whirring IBM Cardatype accounting machine figured what would have happened had an investor put an average $500 a year into a stock every year since 1929—about $15,500 in all. Had he bought Alcoa, his shares would be worth $115,850, and he would have pocketed $17,158 in cash dividends—a paper profit of $117,373 before taxes. Other top gainers on the same basis:

Stock Profit

Goodyear Tire $ 271,142

Dow Chemical 229,500

Caterpillar Tractor 157,102

Phillips Petroleum 132,935

U.S. Steel 127,639

Sears, Roebuck 116,137

Gulf Oil 106,745

G.M. 105,354

Eastman Kodak 104,900

DuPont 98,602

Standard Oil (N.J.) 96,127

G.E. 92,029