Bull Market

On the floor of the Toronto Stock Exchange last week, Canadian traders scrambled for penny stocks like women grabbing for giveaway nylons, went on the biggest buying spree in the exchange's 100-year history. As exhausted clerks tried in vain to keep up with orders, the high-speed ticker lagged five minutes behind. When the siren blared the close of one day's business, a record 12,264,000 shares had changed hands.

The big market was touched off by two unrelated developments, new uranium finds in the Beaverlodge Lake area of northern Saskatchewan, and the reported base-metal discovery near Bathurst, N.B. The uranium, located on property of Gunnar Gold Mines Ltd., sent Gunnar Gold shooting from a 1952 low of 23-c- a share to more than $4. But the New Brunswick issues and the chance they offered speculators to strike it rich caused an even greater flurry of excitement. Typical of the rampaging success of these issues was Porcupine Peninsular, a little-known company with holdings in northern Ontario. When the exchange's Trans-Lux screen flashed word that Porcupine had bought 34 claims near the Bathurst find, shares jumped from 4-c- to 19-c-. In one week, Porcupine alone accounted for the trading of 7,057,900 shares.

Close students of the stock market were a little uneasy. Wrote Beland Honderich in the Toronto Star: "With one or two exceptions, these companies have not had time to do any serious development work. Their properties are largely unknown . . . For every company that strikes it rich, literally dozens will fall by the wayside. And for every speculator who makes a fortune, thousands wind up with nothing but worthless stock." But that word of caution could scarcely impress a construction company clerk when the screen reported his stock at $2.45. "I got in at 8-c-," he said. "I'm just holding on."

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