Stock Market Analysts Await Summer's Traditional Rally
NEW YORK, June 18ÛÓFor nearly 18 months, the stock market has been behaving like one of those video blips that shuttle back and forth in a Pong game.	></br></br>Locked into a narrow trading band of about 100 points, the market has dropped back every time the Dow Jones industrial average reached 1,000 and has bobbed up again when it Slipped below 900, With the Dow hovering near the low end of this range, stock market analysts again are looking for a rally to develop. They are fortified with statistics that show few seasonal phenomena arc as reliable as the traditional summer slock market rally. ; A study by Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Co. shows that such an advance has occurred in each of the past 37 summers going back to 1940, with an average gain of 9.7 per cent.</br></br>Using a different measurement base, Reynolds Securities research chief Robert H.S. Stovall reached a similar conclusion. He said a rally has Keen recorded in each of the 31 summers since the end of World War II, with the best gain (22.5 per cent) recorded in 1970,.the weakest 12 per cent) in 1969, up a flat 2 per cent, and an aver-age'advance of 9.5 per cent for the period.</br></br>" As positive background factors for the market, analysts also note that concerns that inflation and interest rates would accelerate for the rest of 1977 have begun to abate. Corporate profit reports for the second quarter are expected to be robust. When they start pouring in early in July, they could be enough to kickoff the awaited rally.</br></br>Bud Simons, vice president and research chief at Weeden & Co., believes the rally's takeoff is ÛÏlikely to start now, and maybe has already started. 1 think all of a sudden things are going to look pretty good, and the main question then will be whether the economy slows down later this year. But the answer wonÛªt be visible in the statistics for quite some time to come.Û