Wall Street: Little Man, You Had Quite a Day

The little man does not count for much in the stock market any more. The "odd-lotters," as Wall Street refers to customers who deal in 99 shares or less in a transaction, represent only about 6% of an average day's trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Their place of prominence has long since been taken over by managers of institutional funds who buy and sell huge blocks of stock without batting an eye. Only occasionally can the little man make his presence felt—and last week came one of those occasions. Upset by the Middle East war crisis and given a Memorial Day holiday to worry about investments, tens of thousands of small shareholders sold off so heavily that the Big Board registered its sharpest single-day drop since last October.

The drop was general. Fairchild Camera, one of the higher flyers, sagged 91 points. So—by 3¾ points did IBM, one of the bluer chips. In all, the Dow-Jones industrial average, which measures 30 key stocks, fell 12.42 points.

The very next day, however, the institutions reasserted their command of the market, and the Dow-Jones average rose precisely as much as it had fallen—12.42 points. Market watchers credited the rise to the fact that funds moved in to pick up bargains that had been created by the drop of the day before.