Where to Sell Stocks

WALL STREET Where to Sell Stocks As the new $100,000-a-year president of the New York Stock Exchange, 40-year-old G. Keith Funston has the job of persuading the U.S. public to buy stocks. Funston, ex-president of Trinity College, thinks the task is similar to teaching young students the fundamentals of economics. Last week, in the Big Board's monthly, the Exchange, Teacher Funston gave his first lecture.

Because of taxes, said Funston, the rich can no longer provide most of the risk capital for U.S. business. The job will have to be taken up by people in the middle-and lower-income brackets, whose aggregate income has increased enormously. In 1929, Funston noted, there were 660,000 individuals with annual incomes --after taxes--of $5,000 to $10,000. In 1946, there were 2,300,000. In 1929, their combined net income came to $4.5 billion. In 1946, it totaled $11.2 billion. Even greater growth has been shown, added Funston, by incomes below $5,000, and investors in that group are increasing: "A large stockbrokerage firm recently found that one-third of its 'customers' --that is, of its investors--were people with incomes of less than $5,000."

While stocks are not perfect hedges against inflation, said Funston, in the last decade they had certainly "given a much better performance than dollars under mattresses." While the cost of living rose 85% since 1939, the Dow-Jones averages of 65 stocks rose to "within 1% of the increase in the cost of living."

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