WALL STREET: Bull on the Run

The bull market reacted with a snort and a charge last week to the cheery news of stock splits and mergers. By week’s end it had smashed records across much of the board. On the Dow-Jones averages, industrials zoomed closer to the magic 500 mark, shot up four points to close out the week at 487.45 and an alltime high. After a slow start, railroads picked up 1½ points on the final day to close at 164.28. Only utilities failed to make headway.

One of the biggest boosts came from Sears, Roebuck & Co. On the last day of trading, Sears’s directors announced a three-for-one stock split and a dividend boost; in seven minutes Sears stock shot up 6½ points to 117, nearly 43 points above the year’s low. In chemicals, stockholders approved a merger between Lion Oil Co. and Monsanto Chemical Co., sent the big chemical company up 2¼ points to 50 ⅜ In autos, giant General Motors jumped | of a point to 143⅞ when its stockholders put final approval on the-three-for-one stock split announced two months ago. Chrysler stock took a ride on rumors that it, too, would split, jumped 4⅞ points in a day. The company quickly denied the rumor, but Chrysler kept rising anyway, closed the week at the year’s high at 99⅜. Aluminum stocks started climbing at word that Western Electric, biggest U.S. user of copper, was planning to shift part of its phone cable production to aluminum because of copper shortages.

On the American Stock Exchange, a frantic scramble for oil stocks started when news was flashed of a big oil discovery in Israel (see FOREIGN NEWS). In minutes, everyone wanted shares in four small oil companies wildcatting in Israel.

Pan-Israel Oil Co. and Israel-Mediterranean Petroleum doubled in value, jumped more than a point apiece to 2½. Pantepec Oil Co., which had a brief flurry last winter after a radio tip by Columnist Walter Winchell (TIME, Jan. 31) but has done little since, shot up nearly two points to 6 1/8. Israel-American Oil Corp. climbed if points to triple in value and close at 3¼. Between them the four companies traded 365,500 shares. For stockholders in the companies (total shares outstanding: 15 million), the paper profit on the stock rise amounted to some $23 million.