The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-01-15
STOCK MARKET
 VERY UNSTEADY Professional Traders Tried to Find Share Purchasers. TRANSACTIONS FELL OFF Realizing Sales Met Advances In All Cases and Served to Dlscour- age the Professional Element.
 Bonds Active and Firm.
TRANSACTIONS FELL OFF

New York January 14-Today's un- steady and spotty market seemed to represent nothing more than the efforts of professional traders to find purchas- CTS for shares. The constant fluctuations over a narrow range were testimony to the difficulty they found. The volume or transactions fell off to little more than three-fourths of a million shares or about one-half of the business Of last Friday, when the activity of the present movement reached It's continuation. Of to- days dealings, no less than 2OO,9OO shares were of Erie. The continued activity in that stock is the subject of the greatest interest in Wall street at present and surmise exhausted itself to account for it. The failure of Rock Island to move with it today discredited previous ru- mors that Erie was being sought for an eastern outlet of the Rock Island sys- tenn The other coalers were inclined to move with the Fries today and there was a disposition to attach choice lot formation for the so-called eastern se- curities company as probably concerned with further developments in the con- solidation of the anthracite industry. Manhattan was strong for a time, sup posedly owing to the coming operations of the lease to the Interborough Transit company, but the stock reacted with some violence to a point below last night. Western Union was held by the injunc- tion against the removal of its wires by the Pennsylvania Railroad company. Sugar, was first strong and then weak after the report of the annual meeting of stockholders showed that higher divi- dends were not to be expected at pres ent An incident of the day was sales of Canada Southern and Michigan Gen. tral the former at decline of 71a and the latter at a decline of 4S% from the last preceding sales sometime ago. Aside from these special movements the mar ket was dull and sluggish throughout and offered little of interest. The fact that realizing sales met advances in all cases served to discourage the profession al element and led to the sharp break in the afternoon, which carried the av- craze level of prices well below last night. This was particularly in evidence in Rock Island and the large part at tributed to the Rock Island interest in the recent speculation for the rise gave the movements in this stock special infu- enee on the whole list The close was steady at some rally after the break. The failure of the market to advance was considered the more significant in view of the relief of some of the depress- ing factors. Sterling exchange eased off materially today and rose at Paris, thus widening the margin from the gold ex- port point. Call money was appreciably easier and sometimes loans maturing to- day were renewed by the largest bank in the city at per cent Money con- tinues to flow into the local banks both from the sub-treasury and the interior. This seemed to afford immense encour- agement to stock operators during the morning, but did not prevent the latter reaction.
 Bonds were quite active and were firm early, but became irregular when the stock market turned weak.
 Total sales par value $2,2S0, GOO. United States bonds were unchanged on the last call.