WALL STREET: Every Man a Capitalist

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¶First Boston Corp., run by James Coggeshall, the second biggest U.S. underwriter (first: Halsey, Stuart & Co.). ¶Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane, which was started in 1914 by Charles Merrill, has grown under Managing Partner Winthrop Smith into the biggest of all U.S. brokerage houses.

The group is now signing up 550 securities dealers around the U.S. to help distribute the Ford stock, or rather, to ration out the 7,000,000 shares. The foundation wants the stock sold in small lots, and the dealers may parcel out as few as ten shares to a customer. The selling group hopes to work out all sales details so that the foundation can file a registration statement with the Securities & Exchange Commission by Jan. 1. With quick approval, the stock will go on sale Jan. 20. The price is still not set. But, on the basis of Ford's book value of $38 a share and estimated profits this year (about $6 a share), Wall Streeters guess that the price will be around $60 a share and will quickly soar when trading begins.

Cardiac Recovery. The Ford stock could hardly be floated at a better time. The bull market, staggered by the "cardiac break" when President Eisenhower was stricken, has recovered its health. The Dow-Jones industrial average rose 21.69 points in a fortnight; in two days alone last week it went up 12.43 points in the fastest rise since November 1954, closed the week at 476.54, only 10.91 points below the peak reached just before Ike's attack. Railroads and utilities moved up also. By week's end the composite average of 65 industrial, railroad and utility stocks stood at 169.53, a level only 3.98 points short of the bull-market peak.

The doomsayers, whose voices had risen with the cardiac break, were conspicuously silent last week, and the ranks of bulls were growing again. The market's biggest worry right now is the 1956 presidential election. But fear that the election may have a profound effect on the market seems to have little basis. In the last 40 years, the market has shown a surprising impartiality in its readings of the election returns. It has gone up five times and gone down five times. It has gone up after both Democratic and Republican victories, just as it has gone down after them. Thus, while there was some difference of opinion on the immediate future of the market, there was a surprising unanimity of opinion on the state of U.S. business—and its future. In the long run, it is the state of the economy that will determine the course of the market.

A Bet on the Future. The economy shows no sign of weakening. The gross national product is now running at the rate of $392 billion a year, some $24 billion above last year. Disposable personal income is up to $272 billion v. $255 billion a year ago. The total amount of disposable income and savings—the cash that investors could put into stocks—is also up. So are dividends: more than $7 billion was paid out in the first nine months of this year, 9.5% more than in 1954.