What Does Charlie Think?

WALL STREET

One night last week, Columnist Walter Winchell, who writes for Hearst and sells lotions on the side, panted over the radio: "Insiders in New York expect a very sharp decline in the stockmarket before the holidays, suckers." Next day impressionable "suckers" rushed to dump their holdings. Result: the worst market break in two years. In the unreasoning selling, nearly every stock on the Big Board slumped. By day's end the Dow-Jones industrial averages had dropped 3.4 points to 190.4.

In the following days there was little improvement. As stocks drifted in the holiday doldrums, Wall Streeters wondered if Winchell had not done the Street a favor. He had shaken out many an amateur plunger who had no business playing the market anyway. Such a shaking down, they felt, was what the market needed after its long rise. Most Wall Streeters felt that the bull market still has a long way to go. One seasoned wag quipped: "What I want to know is--what does Charlie McCarthy think?"

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