AMERICAN SPECULATION

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 March 1928, Page 5

AMERICAN SPECULATION

WALL STREET FRENZIES.

(Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.)

NEW YORK, March 24.

The customarily well groomed Wall Street broker is undergoing a remark- j able .change as the result of the Stock Market experiencing a record-breaking rally. The broker has been pushed about the trading floor for thirteen days in a frenzy to execute an unprecedented volume of orders, and the pressure is beginning to tell. Many of the less' fit brokers have already dropped but, and have left the city for a vacation, making the work even harder for those remaining. These brokers have made an appeal for mercy from the floor of the Exchange. To-day they petitioned the Governors-, of the Exchange for a triple holiday, asking them to close the doors on 6ood Friday and on Easter Saturday, but. no action has yet been taken. The records have disclosed that since the foundation of the Stock Ex-, change of New York, in the year 1792, until January 1 last, there had only been eleven three million dollars share days. Thus the present boom has broken all records. Each broker’s commission has averaged 830 dollars daily during the boom, with total sales of approximately forty-four million shares. ■ ' .

One of the largest pieces of internal financing of the American banking institutions is indicated in the National City Bank*s announcement that it will increase its capital stock from seventyfive million dollars to ninety million dollars. Each new share will be is-, sued and sold to the present stockholders at four hundred dollars per share, and as the shares of the National CityBank are now selling in the open market at 340 dollars each, it will mean, the distribution of many millions to the present stockholders. Moreover, the bank, with its combined capital and surplus of 235 million dollars, will far exceed the wealth of any private banking institution in America.