Shorts

Since the stockmarket has been rising without a single major setback for more than two years, short-sellers have had a pretty sorry time. The last real inning for Bears was the great crash in whiskey stocks in 1933. Last week the New York Stock Exchange reported that its monthly tabulations showed that the short interest at the end of January was the heaviest since June 1933, just before that summer's big break. Relatively, the present short interest appeared more important than in 1933, because the volume of trading at that time was twice as large. Since then the short interest has hovered around 1,000,000 shares, hitting a low of 712,000 and ending last year at 1,136,000. By the end of January it was up to 1,314,000 shares.*

*The Federal Reserve Board announced last week that its adjusted index of U. S. industrial production (calculated on a 1923-25 "normal") dropped from 121 in December to 115 in January. Yet except for December, when business was abnormally high for that time of year, the Reserve Board index stood at its highest point for any month since October, 1929.

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