Extra, Extra

A flock of year-end dividends and a spate of extras were declared last week. Amerada Petroleum Corp. declared an extra $1. New York Central upped its dividend 50-c-, and Polaroid Corp. gave stockholders one new share for every two shares held. Despite the good news, the dreary market slipped, under heavy selling of the tobacco stocks. In one day, the three biggest tobacco stocks fell more than three points each as investors took note of 1) published reports linking cigarette-smoking with lung cancer and 2) a slip in tobacco sales over the past few months. By week's end tobacco stocks perked up, but this week slipped again, along with the Dow-Jones industrial averages.

There was even less cheer in the brokerage houses themselves. Their employees, who pocketed as much as a month's pay in bonuses last year, were headed for a thin Christmas. Many brokers this year will hand out nothing at all.

While trading volume is running somewhat ahead of the 313-million-share turnover last year, brokers' expenses have been rising even faster than commissions. As a result, on days when trading volume drops below 1,200,000 shares, many smaller brokers are hard pressed to make ends meet. So far this year, trading has fallen below this "pay point" on 85 days, and below 1,000,000 shares on 35 of them. The big 3,000,000-share days, enough of which strung together would print "Merry Christmas" on brokerage tickers, have occurred only twice.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.