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Lower. Prices are cut an average of 10% in the midsummer catalogue, of Sears, Roebuck & Co. Women's clothing is down as much as 56% (average 13%), men's clothing as much as 35%, home furnishings as much as 34%.

Pen Pinnacle. For those fed up with ball-point pens, the Everlast Pen Co. has a new model. At one end is a ball pen, at the other end, a conventional fountain pen. The price: 89 1/2.

Record High. Volume of consumer credit reached a new U.S. peak at the end of April, the Federal Reserve Board reported. April's increase of $207,000,000, due largely to heavier installment buying, brought the total to $10,256,000,000. That was $149,000,000 above the previous peak in 1941, more than double the wartime low of $4,835,000,000 in February 1944.

Record Low. For the first time in their history, life insurance companies made less than 3% on their investments in 1946. So the Institute of Life Insurance announced last week. The earning rate was 2.92%, compared with 3.07% in 1945, 3.61% in 1940, 5.25% in 1925. The decline, said the Institute, is the reason the cost of life insurance has increased in the last 15 years despite lower death rates among policy holders.

Welcome Back. Holland made its first postwar test of the U.S. private-capital market with a $20 million bond issue floated by Kuhn, Loeb & Co. The money will be used either to repay an Export-Import Bank credit or for reconstruction. At week's end about 95% of the bonds were sold.

Mixed May. The New York Stock Exchange had its best two-days' rally in months. At month's end the Dow-Jones industrial averages were 169.25, up six points from the year's low on May 17.

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