Abstract

Finance

The remarkable advance on the U.S. stock exchange last week attracted unusually wide attention. To begin with, no one had been at all sure what would happen on the stock exchange when the subscription lists to the Liberty Loan should close. The war situation of itself was an uncertain enough consideration; but it was only one. An immense part of the country's available capital was about to be "ear-marked," so to speak, against the three to four billion dollars payable on the war loan. Before these huge payments could have been completed, the income and excess-profits tax payments would fall due in June, and they would call for at least another $3,000,000,000 slice of capital. With the money market thus apparently tied hand and foot, there was ground for predicting a fall in stocks.