Market notes
CUSTOS
A weak gilt-edged market was reassured by the May trade returns, imports being slightly down and the visible trade gap reduced from £41 to £25 million, but War Loan, which the Govern- men has has stopped supporting, had already slipped to 52 to yield nearly 61 per cent. Sooner or later the Government must start supporting this market again in preparation for the steel issue on 28 July. The equity markets had to suffer the unexpected blow to Tv shares, which lost £113 million in value in one day.
Oil shares were slightly firmer on the news that some countries had re-started exports but - the position of British Petroleum is by no means - clear. The shares have now fallen from a high level of 70s 6d to 64s 3d to yield 6.2 per cent.
Industrial shares became suddenly strong on the announcement that talks might be resumed with Rhodesia. Public interest is still being whetted by various bids. The British Oxygen bid for Murex has been successful with the result that Murex has jumped to 40s 6d. At long last a bid for Vitamins has come along—strangely enough from Beecham& For a long time Vitamins have been in the doldrums and shareholders will rejoice at the opportunity of getting out at lOs. Among mining shares it is Australia which is still making the pace. Western Mining has recovered sharply to 139s and the sedate holding companies like RTZ which have big Australian interests have been noticeably firmer and now yield only 3.4 per cent. In the property market Trafalgar House has made an interesting bid for Ideal Building offering one-fift:. of a 71 per cent preference share plus 5s 3d cash. The attraction of the preference shares is that they carry subscription rights into the ordinary share starting at us in 1968 against the current market price of 14Vad (cum 1 in 4 bonus or us 7d ex bonus). If this goes through and Ideal Building shareholders sell their new holding these preference shares should be an attractive purchase.
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