Market & Maneuvers

"It is a long step forward if for no other reason than it is a getting down to realities," pontificated the Wall Street Journal last week on the subject of the franc's devaluation and the promise of international monetary stabilization. Wall Street's more practical reaction to the most significant financial news of the year was to be found on stock-market tape, where its collective opinion is always best expressed. Share prices turned firmly if unspectacularly upward.

Some people gloomed about the possibility of heavy selling by Europeans who had bought U. S. securities as the safest haven for their capital. Would they now want to repatriate their funds? Some feared, probably groundlessly, the inevitable turn in the tide of transatlantic gold. Most traders, tacitly admitting the difficulty of gauging even the immediate effects of such involved monetary maneuvers, simply worked on the theory that any effort to ease the bonds of international trade was open to bullish interpretation.

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