Mohave County miner. [volume] (Mineral Park, A.T. [Ariz.]) 1882-1918, 1917-03-03
THE COPPER SHARE MARKET

Speculative and investment buying
demand is showing a decided tendency
to center in the coppers. 1t was in
evitable that it should. When the
public recovered its wits, after the
two recent sensational price declines,
it discovered that copper stocks were
selling for so much less than their
real value that all the risks usually
attendant upon the purchase of more
or less speculative issues had been
eliminated. The worst that possibly
could happen had been discounted
twice over and consequently there was
no alternative left but advancing
prices.
The rise that has occurred this week
has made very little change in the sit
uation, except that it has helped to
stimulate speculative confidence. The
shares Of all the dividend paying cop
per mining companies are selling still
for very much less than they are
worth. Earnings are running all the
way from 25 to 80 per cent annually
on the market prices of the best cop
per stocks and current dividends rep
resent yields of 16 to 26 per cent on
investments. Next month tens Of mil
lions of dollars will be distributed to
copper shareholders. Purchases can
be made, therefore, with assurance of
immediate returns and not merely in
anticipation of distant future pros
perity.
There is every prospect that the
producing companies will receive |
somewhere between 80 and SO cents a !
pound for all the copper they can
turn out during the closing six months
of this year. Their first half year
production has been sold already at
prices averaging somewhere around 81
or % cents and they have assurance
of a very long period of abnormal
ahead of them.
Unlike the industrial and transpor-
tation companies, the copper pro-
ducers are not striving to iquidate
long standing indebtedness or to re-
their credit. The two or
three companies having notes or bonds
have far more than suf-
ficient cash on hand to pay their
debts and all of the rest of the lead
ing producers possess from three to
five times the amount of cash and
quick assets that they formerly con-
sidered adequate for working capital.
While a few of them will improve
and extend their reduction plants and
buy additional mining property, at
least 80 per cent of this years net
earnings will be available for dividend
payments, and the companies whose
shares are listed on the New York
and Boston stock exchanges ought to
earn S350,OO0,000, or more than three
times the profits of normal year.
In ordinary times it is the best pol
cy to restrict ones purchases to the
shares of those companies having a
ong productive life and ability to pro-
luce copper at low cost per pound.
t is also advisable at such times eth ;
II to pay for stocks outright or to
'ortify purchases with strong mar
gins. At present it seems to be ex- {
disable to omit such measures of eau I
ion. Margins of Is to 20 per cent {
re likely to prove ample, as they will t
,e strengthened greatly and rapidly t
" the abnormal dividends now being t
aid. Of course speculation on mar c
in and pyramiding of accounts should Q
ot be ventured upon by the novice, t
kept with the advice of thoroughly a
rained and reliable stock brokers; but t
God stocks are so cheap now and the b
1ture outlook is so exceedingly prom n
'ing that men with money and cour- c