Stocks End Off Despite Late Rally
The stock market today went through another session of slow decline but cut its worst losses late in the afternoon.</br></br>At its lowest point, the Dow-Jones industrial average was down 6.68 but it closed with a loss of 4.79 at 881.40.</br></br>Analysts saw nothing particular in the news to account for this improvement. They observed, however, that whenever the current market falls enough to make some of the higher-quality issues more attractive on a price basis, institutional investors shake off their lethargy enough to do some buying.</br></br>The decline in auto industry sales for the first ten days of July to a rate 10.7 per cent below the daily rate of a year agoÛÓalthough there were only seven days in the selling period this year as against eight last yearÛÓlurked behind softness in auto shares. Contributing to this was the disposition of a block of 89,800 shares of Chrysler at 39. The stock ended as third most active, off Vs at 39% on 155,100 shares.</br></br>Much of the marketÛªs current spell of weakness was linked by analysts to uneasiness over tight money and higher interest rates, with fear that the Federal Reserve Board would raise the discount rate again.