SYDNEY WOOL SALES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 63, 12 February 1936, Page 5

SYDNEY WOOL SALES.

TONE VERY FIRM. SYDNEY, Fob. 11. At the wool sales 10,723 bales were offcred, 10,243 being sold at auction and 704 privately. The tone of the market was very firm with a hardening ’tendency for better class skirtings. Greasy Merino mado to 29 3-4 d LEVEL OF PRICES. RISKS OF UNDUE ADVANCE. Discussing the question of wool prices, the Sydney Morning Herald states: —“All information from abroad in regard to stocks of wool in consuming countries this season has been so favourable that the only possible enemy to the market ap pears to bo a much advanced level of prices, which will slow down turnover at the mills. Will that risk be avoided ? .No person can definitely answer the question. Every mill owner is anxious to share in trade which is available, and the manufacturer would be in ill-favour with his customers if he had to notify them that he could not supply goods owing to lack of stocks of raw material. A more or less inescapable pressure, therefore, exists in times of decreased supplies to force values despite tho knowledge that experience of past occasions points to tho risks attached to extreme prices. “Tho only sound force which controls values is the law of supply and demand. If trade is not adequate for the quantities of raw material available prices will bo low in spite of all artificial efforts made to prevent them receding. In reverse circumstances they will rise. Though very large returns for their wool would be relished by the growers who received them, they have not in the past proved of general benefit to shcepowners. A reaction from them is sooner or later inevitable, and over-confidence is replaced by extreme nervousness which carries values to an unduly depressed level.”