Market Week

Last week, for the first time in its 103-year history the hard-hit Boston Stock Exchange decided to advertise. Simultaneously all exchanges were encouraged by further liberalization of margin requirements by the Federal Reserve Board. Last month the Board cut margin requirements from 55% to 40%. Last week's changes were not so radical but will aid many a trader when they go into effect January 1. Broadening Regulation T. they permit withdrawals from restricted accounts under special circumstances, allow customers to make deposits which need not be absorbed into the restricted accounts, separate commodity and security accounts.

Such technical changes, however, are only an eddy in the economic storm now assaulting stock prices. Judged by indices, this storm last week was blowing as hard as ever. Steel production slumped another two points to 27.5% of capacity. Lumber, power and cement output dwindled. Freight cars were at the year's emptiest. Furniture sales were 30% less than last year. But indices, being statistical compilations of past events, are always a bit behind the times. More intangible but more up-to-date indications last week seemed to point in the other direction. The New York stockmarket completed ten days of solid gain with Dow-Jones industrial averages reaching 128. Moody's commodity price index was up from 144.6 on November 24 to 149.2 last week with industry buying heavily for the first time in months. And Bernard E. (''Sell 'em Ben") Smith, most famed of Wall Street bears, for the first time in his life came out as co-underwriter of an issue--100,000 shares of Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp.

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