Bull Market

The boom was on. Day after day on the New York Stock Exchange last week, stocks surged upward in a roaring, old-fashioned bull market. Brokers sweated ecstatically through two 2,000,000-share days and even one 2,517,340-share day, the busiest in over a year. Typical of the furious buying & selling: 1,111,570 shares changed hands in two hours, and twice during the week the tickers lagged. Up went the Dow-Jones industrial averages to 147.28, highest since May 10, 1940, when the Nazi strike into the Lowlands started the market on a long slide down. The rail average rose to 41.23, a seven-year peak.

For once, Wall Streeters unanimously agreed on the reason for the boom. D-day had touched off a buying ripple, which, had turned into a tidal wave under the fair, strong wind of cheering war news. The Street seemed confident that the end of the war was in sight. The brisk buying of "peace" stocks, notably those of I.T. & T., Packard, and all the war-busy auto companies, turned into a scramble. Most riproaring of all was Willys-Overland, which got a new boss fortnight ago, ex-Fordman Charles E. Sorensen (TIME, June 19). Day after day Willys charged ahead, helped along by a rumor: a new postwar combine of small auto and parts companies.

Even the chart-minded fence-sitters, who buy & sell according to the famed Dow market theory, finally had satisfactory statistical evidence of a bull market. Since last July, when the market stumbled after a long rise, Dow theorists have anxiously waited for the market to "prove itself," i.e., break through the July peak, or slump into a full grown bear market. Last week's breakthrough supplied the bullish proof.

Best evidence of boom was the swarm of little buyers who jumped into the market last week. Till then, the slow rise of the market had been paced by the high-priced Blue Chips (TIME, June 12). These were still popular, but they were being rapidly shouldered out by cheap stocks. On the peak day all but one of the most active stocks sold for under $18.

Wall Street was marching happily home from the war.

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