News stories from Monday January 27, 1975

Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:

Seven economists of various political persuasions agreed unanimously that a tax reduction of at least the $16 billion proposed by President Ford, perhaps as much as $25 billion, was needed to pull the economy out of its recession. They testified before the House Ways and Means Committee, which is trying to determine the kind of tax-cut and energy-conservation proposals it should recommend. [New York Times] The stock market in New York erupted in a sharp rally in the heaviest trading day in New York Stock Exchange history. Brokers attributed the upward surge in prices to further declines in interest rates from previous high levels and to a court ruling last Friday that was favorable to the International Business Machines Corporation, a market favorite. [New York Times] The sharply higher cost of oil imports pushed the nation's trade deficit to $3.07 billion last year, the second largest in this century, after $6.4 billion in 1972. The trade deficit -- the excess of imports over exports -- rose to $606 million in December from $113 million in November. If oil imports in 1974 had cost the same as in 1973, the nation would have had a huge trade surplus -- about $14 billion. [New York Times] The operations of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and more than a dozen other law enforcement agencies of the government will be investigated by a special Senate bipartisan committee. The Senate voted 82 to 4 to establish the committee, whose chairman is expected to be Senator Frank Church, Idaho Democrat, a severe critic of some of the practices of the C.I.A. [New York Times] A major statistical study by the American Medical Association has found that pills used by more than 1.5 million Americans to control diabetes are probably hazardous and capable of causing premature death from heart disease. Among the pills, the one most closely studied was one based on the drug tolbutamide, sold by the Upjohn Company under the trade name Orinase. [New York Times] International airlines said that they had voted to restore cut-rate youth fares between the United States and Europe, effective April 1, in an attempt to stimulate declining trans-Atlantic travel and to discourage the young from going to Canada for cheap flights. The airlines' agreement must be approved by government regulatory agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. [New York Times] The Chinese government, which recently became this country's biggest grain customer, canceled contracts to buy 601,000 tons of wheat that had been scheduled for shipment between next month and September, it was announced by Cook Industries, Inc., a major grain trading company. The tonnage was about two-thirds of the total wheat registered for shipment to China from the present to mid-1976. Most grain traders appeared baffled by the shipment's cancellation. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 692.66 (+26.05, +3.91%)
S&P Composite: 75.37 (+2.39, +3.27%)
Arms Index: 0.66

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	1,476	28.10
Declines	189	2.37
Unchanged	195	1.66
Total Volume		32.13

* in millions of shares

Arms Index is the ratio of volume per declining issue to volume per advancing issue; a figure below 1.0 is bullish.

Market Index Trends
Date	DJIA	S&P	Volume*
January 24, 1975	666.61	72.98	20.67
January 23, 1975	656.76	72.07	17.96
January 22, 1975	652.61	71.74	15.33
January 21, 1975	641.90	70.70	14.78
January 20, 1975	647.45	71.08	13.45
January 17, 1975	644.63	70.96	14.25
January 16, 1975	655.74	72.05	17.11
January 15, 1975	653.39	72.14	16.58
January 14, 1975	648.70	71.68	16.61
January 13, 1975	654.18	72.31	19.78