Norwich bulletin., 1910-01-19
MARKET VERY IRREGULAR.
Professional Trading Element Com pIeteIy Mystified-Prices End at Lowest of the Day.

New York. Jan. 1S.-It is a rarity in stock market experience to see so vio- lent a price movement as that which was in force yesterday and last week arrested so completely and suddenly ,, as was the case for the greatest part of today. The continuation of move
 ment in one direction usually occurs on
 active trading. quickly followed by
 violent reaction The departure from
 precedent in today's market proved
 completely mystifying to the profes-
 sional trading element Their efforts to
 conjecture what lay beneath the sur
 face of the market resulted in an ex-
 ceedingly confused and irregular move ment. Time and again a fall in price
 was arrested by the appearance of de-
 ternined buying and bidding for stocks. On the other hand, the demand
 repeatedly died out in course of the numerous rallies and left the market
 dull and neglected, without apparent power of initiative. The seeming lack of aggressiveness in following up the buying on rallies lulled the uncovered bears into sense of security and they showed no signs of anxiety to cover their short contracts until late in the day The unyielding resistance devel-
 oped to the fall in prices by that time began to get on the nerves of the bears and their covering operations caused an upward reaction that put a, more natural com pleXion on the market. Prices dropped back abruptly to the lowest of the day when the Hill stocks broke in the last hour. Foreign sell ing of stocks was an important inf1u- ence in the early unsettlement large selling orders for London account be- ing executed in all of the leading in ternational stocks. This was the ex- pression of financial London's opinion of the course of the English elections. The fall in British consols today and yesterday has covered nearly a full point. In ordinary circumstances such fears of socialistic government policies as are profeSSed by the London f1nan- cial world, coupled with the consider able decline in prices of American se- curities which has occurred, would be expected to divert British. capital into American investments. The unloading of foreign speculative holdings proves more influential, at the moment, than any such investment takings. This contributed materially to the morning dip in prices which put some of the market leaders to prices lower than the lowest of yesterday. The selling of United States Steel was particu- larly large and persistent. In the northwestern granger group, on the other hand, there was some evidence of support, until the Hill stocks slump ed late in the day. There was a re- vival of Tumors of the possibility of dividend reductions in the group which have been prevalent for several days The large capital expansion of late years by the railroads of that territory and some falling off in earnings in the last month or two for some of them made the groundwork of these rumors The opening up of competition between some of these roads as a result of the new capital outlay is given as a pos- sible explanation of this declining ten dency in earnings. Another spell of weakness in Rock Island which ac- companied the election of Rock Island presentatives to the Lehigh Valley board was read as disappointment that ff1e new order of things in that Tireo
 tion did not go further. The proceed ings at the, annual meeting of the In terborough Metropolitan stockholders brought some selling of those stocks