Tabell’s Market Letter – October 20, 1948
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Technical Market Action The market continues to move ahead on slowly 'increasing volume. Despite the fact that since the September 27th lows the market has rallied over eleven points, the advance has been orderly and, as yet, there are no signs of an overbought position. The pace of the advance has been truly remarkable. In the last twenty trading days, the industrial average has advanced on sixteen days and declined on only three. This average has closed higher for the last nine successive trading days. The action of the rails has not been quite as impressive. The rail average, during the same period of time, has advanced on twelve days and declined on seven. In addition, while the industrial average at Wednesday's high of 187.00 has decisively penetrated the September 7th intra-day high of 185.64, the rails at Wednesday's high of 61.41 were still quite a distance away from the comparable 63.25 high of September 7th. However, the rail average has had an equally good percentage advance from the September lows and over the longer term, the rail average is ahead of the industrials. Per-haps it is only normal that they pause and wait for the industrials to catch up. After an advance such as we have witnessed for the last three weeks, it could be in order for the whole market to pause and consolidate. However, recent market action indicates that at this stage, such a consolidation would be minor and of short duration. The action of the steel stocks has been very impressive. Almost every important issue has reached new high territory — not only for the year but for over two years . Most of the steel issues have held in narrow trading ranges for the last four or five months. U. S. Steel, for example, has held in the 76-83 range. In most cases, these ranges have been penetrated on the upside. The upside price objectives for the intermediate term suggest higher levels. Listed below are some of the leading steel issues in my recommended list together with thei'r upside objectives if the 1948 high is penetrated. 1948 HU!ih Wednesday's High Upside Ob,jective Armco Steel Colorado Fuel & Iron Jones & Laughlin Republic Steel Sharon Steel U. S. Steel Wheeling Steel Youngstown Sheet & T. 32 3/8 20 5/8 37 3/4 31 7/8 44 1/8 83 1/2 56 1/4 87 1/2 31 1/4 21 39 32 3/8 45 1/4 84 1/2 56 3/4 86 3/4 41 43 25 – 29 49 39 52 88 – 90 63 – 65 99 – 101 U.S.Steel also has a 101 objective that could be reached during this intermediate advance. The steels are in a definite uptrend with only minor dips indicated. I October 20, 1948 EDMUND W. TABELL SHIELDS & COMPANY Closings Dow-Jones Industrials Dow-Jones Rails Dow-Jones 65-Stock 186.51 61.09 69.53 , ,- , The opinions expressed 1n this leHer are the personal interpretations of charts by Mr. Edmund W. labell and are not presented as the optnions of Shields & Company.