Fed Aids Stock Prices With 'Operation Twist'
DECEMBER declines in the stock market are frequently due to tax-loss selling and therefore are as m e aningiess as gruff husbandly responses a t the breakfast table.</br></br>This could be the case now. But we wonÛªt know till we get the answer from the market, itselfÛÓin January. Will it bounce back? Will it show resilience?</br></br>The yield statistics are reassuring. They do not suggest that President JohnsonÛªs rollback of interest rates will provoke a crash in 1965 comparable to President KennedyÛªs rollback of steel prices in 1962.</br></br>Circumstances are different. Before the Ûª62 break, stocks had rollicked well ahead of improvement in corporate profits and dividends. In December, 1961, industrial shares offered the meager yield of</br></br>In contrast, returns today are 3 per cent, 3.2 per cent and 4.3 per cent respectively. Only the rails offer less. And their economic condition, as a group, has improved markedly since.