Salt Lake Tribune | 1916-05-19 | Page 16 | Rise in Reading Shares Creates some Excitement

RISE IN READING SHARES CREATES SOME EXCITEMENT Wiseacres in Wall Street Buy on Prospect of AAelon-cutting; Only the Insiders Know. By BROADAN WALL. By International News Service. NEW YORK. Mav IS. When Reading sold at J100 a shar today it created almost al-most as much excitement among professionals pro-fessionals as was created fifteen vears aso when Northern Pacific- sold at $1000. Northern Pacific solrl up in a panh', and Wall street Is In a state of panic now a panic of prosperity. Poor traders suddenly sud-denly made rich are In panic lest they lose their money and multi-millionaires are in a panic of uncertainty as to whether wheth-er they stiould sell their stocks or hold tiiem for a little longer. Sober opinion in reeard to Reading Is thai the real wonder regarding t hat stock Is in its lower price, not its high price. Everybody in Wall street has known for years that Reading has concealed assets worth at least double the highest price at which it ever sold. The trouble with the stock has always been its frequent rapid advances on exactly the kind of talk that accompanies the present advance ad-vance talk of distribution of assets. May Be a Pool. Only half a dozen men really 'know now whether the movement under way is due to a genuine intention to distribute the assets or whether it is just a pooli taking advantage of the public's knowledge knowl-edge of assets and ignorance of intentions. inten-tions. Reading" is earning fully 25 per cent and might easily double its dividend. That would Just i fy a price even higher t ban that at which it sold today. It could also distribute its Jersey Central stock or its Reading Coal fr Iron stock. In fact, traders who are most active in it claim they have been informed that there its to he a series of melons cut by the Reading company. .This would make the advance cumulative and enable those in chart;e of the market to keep Rfadinsr a leader for many months and ultimately coax the other railroads into a- ttvlty. Baltimore it Ohio, which owns a laree block of Read in c. sto.-k, was advanced nearly two points. New York Central moved up a point. Industrials Neglected. Industrials were neglected. The dividend divi-dend on Distillers' made little impression on the street, but tiie market in General Gen-eral was strong. Traders welcomed leadership lead-ership of the railroads. Norfolk $z Western was another railroad making a new hiph record today, having sold as high as- 126.4. Heavy shipments of gold to Hie United States from Canada by the British government la taken in some quarters to mean that the liquidation liquida-tion of British-owned securities has reached Its end and that these frold shipments ship-ments were for the purpose of stabilising sterlltiK exchange in this market In the absence of liquidation of American securities. securi-ties. IistlUers' Securities corporation de-dared de-dared a dividend of 6 per cent on its stock, retired S2. 000, 000 of bonds and made the announcement that the company com-pany Is earning at the rate of at least 20 per cent. Wall streeT was skeptical up to the last minute and the stock acted badly during the. hour while the directors were in session ses-sion When the announcement was finally made on the tickers the stock picked up gradually, but met liquidation.