STATE OF BUSINESS: Seesaw Stocks

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After sliding gently downhill for months, Wall Street's stock market went out for a short, whistling toboggan ride last week. It shot down to 454.82 on the Dow-Jones industrial average, almost 70 points below the bull-market peak set last April.

Next day the market turned right around, climbed 7.32 points to make up more than half of the loss, followed it up with another burst of buying later in the week to wipe out the last of the damage. The final Dow-Jones figure: 468.07, or 1.78 points higher than where it started.

Most experts thought the jitters were caused by such worries as lower earnings by some companies, a slowing-down in some industries, tight money and rumors of hard days in the aircraft industry (see below). There was more agreement on one of the reasons for the upsurge—a cheery report by Treasury Secretary George Humphrey, who last month muttered glumly about a "hair-curling depression." Humphrey now gave a further reading: "There are no signs of recession. If someone said to me, 'Do you see signs that we are in for trouble? Do you think business and the volume of activity will greatly decline in the next 18 months?', I would say 'No, I do not.' "