Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-10-03
STOCK MOVEMENT
EXTREMELY MIXED
Technical Rather Than Outside
Influences Were Responsible
for UnsettIement
FEWER POOL OPERATIONS

New York. Oct. 3.--The New York
Evening Suns closing financial re-
view today says:
The stock market passed through va
rious mild phases of advance and de-
cline today which carried it nowhere in
particular. At the start the last was
highly unsettled and for the first two
hours rather feverish trading ensued,.
During this period stocks were for
sale on rather liberal scale and be
fore the downward movement spent its
force net declines of from to 4 points
were registered by the popular specua
tive issues.
1t was difficult to assign any one rca-
sou for the course of prices, and prob
ably the mixed movement of quotations
was due to number of circumstances.
In the first place, the market has had
very considerable advance in the last
few weeks, and reaction of some sort
was due on technical grounds alone.
Bear operators adopted a more ag-
gressive attitude and they succeeded in
bringing out miscellaneous line of
commission house holdings. The steel
stocks all lost ground but were rela-
lively stable. Steel common dropped
below 105, Crucible lost 10 points
and Bethlehem Steel B was off about .
points.
The serious illness of President Will
son apparently provoke quite little of
the selling. All things considered, how
ever, the ground lost by stocks was en-
cOuragingly small. At midday selling
pressure was lifted and securities rallied
quite generally. Trading settled down
at a slower pace and aside from a few
special movements the share list was
colorless. United States Steel rallied
point from its low and corresponding
gains were noted elsewhere.
There was. however, a subsistence of
active pool operations for the advance
which have been in progress in one de-
partment or another during recent scs
sions American Locomotive went to n
new high price of 116 and American
Tobacco jumped ahead again for a gain
of more than j points. Fisher Body,
in response to the announcement that
control would probably pass to the
General Motors corporation, registered
a new high above 14S. Wide fuctua-
tions were confined to few of the
more speculative properties
Factors governing the stock market
outlook were as a whole unchanged,
and as favorable as they have been right
along. Advices from steel centers con-
tinued to tell of returning strikers to
the mills, and all the indications are
that the backbone of the controversy
has been broken. Tonnage figures tell
the story, and these show an increase
of output over that of the first week.
No plants have yielded ground to the
unions and more shops formerly closed
have been reopened.
The street followed with close in
terest the progress of the Senate inves-
tigation, but nothing new was brought
out
Prices retraced the ground lost earlier
in the day very easily. The railroad
stocks were fairly conspicuous during
the afternoon rally and improved all
around. While fresh incentive was
lacking to continue marking prices up
at the same rate as recently, the i'm
preston was nevertheless given by
stocks that the line of least resistance
was still upward. 1t required very little
buying to turn stocks upward again fol-
lowing the early slump.