WALL STREET: Still Healthy

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For the talk of recession, Wall Street still had a strong answer. Last week the Dow-Jones averages, which had been rising for four weeks, kept bumping against their ceiling in heavy buying. But profit-taking nipped the advances, and the averages ended the week a shade below their high. Utilities set a new high for 22 years and rails were also up, though still a good bit below the 1953 high. Bears could argue that the averages included only 65 stocks, thus were not the best measure of the market's strength. But many stocks not in the averages were also climbing. The January figures for all 1,532 stocks on the New York Exchange showed an average gain of $1.96 a share and the highest average price ($42.03) since last February.

Wall Streeters were coming to the conclusion that much of the pessimism is overdone. To make their point, they cited Chrysler. The company's share of the auto market slumped nearly 1% last year, and Chrysler was expected to have a poor earnings report. Rumors even buzzed of a possible cut in dividends. Yet when its annual report came out last week, Chrysler announced a record gross of $3.3 billion. Though it had a 5% drop in its net income, it still made $8.59 a share in 1953 and declared the usual $1.50 quarterly dividend.