Railway traffics are an unusually: veracious index to general industrial Stock Exchange trends curing the }vear present problems of some complexity. The "Financial News" index Jot the market value of thirty leading British industrial shares reflects with remarkable clarity the climb of British industry out of the pit depression. Early in December the Index stood at 93.0, which was above the figure at the close of the previous year and no less than 197%} per cent. Jabove the lowest point for the past five years. In view of the monetary tendency of the latter pbrt of 1994, the same journal's index of twenty fixed-interest securities must be Fegarded as of unusual importance. [The early December fgurs was just below 140, against 1287 at the end lof 1088 and the 1931 low record figure of 906. What the Press has called the "gilt-edged boom" has, in fact, }been in evidence from the beginning the year. though its pace was not form. In the latter months of the year. however, political uncertainty on the Continent, distrust of Presi-Jdent Roosevelt's recovery measures, and the fear that industrial recovery Britain had got very near its Joptimum in the prevailing conditions, produced a rise to unprecedented heights at a very nearly tinprecedent-Jed rate. There was. of course, a reaction. caused more by technical {influences than by any "natural" reason, We, Chambertain's Hints Mr. Keynes's anticipations of a er cent. or lower yield basis for gilt edged stocks look like being tulsiied im the coming year, Certainly, the plethora of funds has shown no sign Jof diminishing. and during November was responsible for a Treasury bill rate of less than % per cent. Can Industry absorb these funds? This is the question which has been everyone's lips. The answer, it must bbe confessed, is more likely to come }trom the index of world industrial production compiled by the Institut Hur Konjunkturforschung than from {the Board of Trade's domestic indices. And_ the former declined by 6 per cent between June and August, and there was a further reduction in Sepetmber.
Unfortunately, therefore, 1934 does not end on a note of untainted optimism, "Mr. Neville Chamberlain, excessively secretive, has dropped hints as to the imprebsbility of further tax concessions in his next Budget, though a surplus of some sort will probably be shown. The use to which this will be pot and the model of future budgets looks, bow~ ever, as likely to be determined by [European political uncertainty as by [British industrial requirements. This looking forward, however. At the moment, though we must beware of too. comfortable "a. feeling, "We can look back to 1934 as @ year of progress and forward to 1983 with eon siderable confidence.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.