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The Treasury used to encourage small investors, and inadvertently small free riders, by honoring all single bond subscriptions before prorating its oversubscribed issues to big bidders. Last fall the Treasury hastily changed this allotment system after an article in Scribner's called small investors' attention to the possibilities. But S. F. Porter, who wrote that article, thinks free riding will remain a profitable sport so long as the Treasury can successfully finance its issues.
Sylvia Porter herself has taken free rides on ten Treasury issues, has each year doubled in this and other ways the capital she put into the Government market. She speculates with the help of complicated graphs, for which her husband, Reed Richard Porter of Irving Trust Co., has to do the arithmetic. In what spare time remains, she plays the piano, goes to the movies, and writes fiction that thus far has impressed no publisher.
On long-term Government-bond speculation, Expert Porter is bullish: ". . . Whatever occurs, holders of Government securities may be confident that the nation's fiscal authorities will guard their interests in the market so long as the Treasury faces a tremendous program of debt refunding." When she is asked about short-term prospects, she quotes the forecast of an anonymous financier: "The stock market, sir, will fluctuate."