Stocks Churn To Small Gain: Steel Shares Gam Plus Margin Widens Gambling Stocks Up
NEW YORK, April 18ÛÓThe stock market hauled itself to another small gain on average Friday, with several sharp gains and losses nearly balancing each other out.</br></br>Prices moved higher through the morningÛÓsome brokers thought it was in anticipation of President NixonÛªs _ press conference ÛÓ and tailed off after the news session. Volume ran higher than on Thursday.</br></br>The Dow Jones industrial average was ahead nearly three points at noon, dropped into minus ground shortly before the close and then rallied to finish with a gain of 0.70 point at 924.82.</br></br>Standard and PoorÛªs 500-stock composite was ahead 0.46 point to 101.24 largely on a 1)4-point jump in heavily-weighted American Telephone and the New York Stock Exchange index rose 0.24 point to 56.56.</br></br>Trading volume came in spurts during the afternoon, with high volume and low volume periods alternating. At each of the hourly readings, the pace was ahead of Thursday as 10.85 million shares changed hands, compared with 9.36 million in the previous session.