3,400,000 Shares

The tremendous activity on the New York Stock Exchange on Nov. 10, when the "bull market" in automobile shares collapsed violently, established a new high record for all time in the number of shares sold in a single day.

Three previous times in the history of the Stock Exchange there had been "3,000,000-share days." The first was the record "bull day" for all time on April 30, 1901; the second, the "Northern Pacific corner" day on May 9, 1901; and the third the "peace leak" day in December, 1916. Of these the second held the record at 3,336,695 shares. Nov. 10, 1925, however, surpassed this 24-year record by seeing 3,448,747 shares sold in the Exchange open market. According to some financial scribes, this was the worst break in the market on record, but most old-timers in Wall Street considered it a slight matter beside the terrific activity of the Northern Pacific corner.

The stock market, led by the motor shares, had continued to soar for months and a reaction was obviously overdue. In such a situation, as has often been proved, the crash in prices can be and usually is attributed to almost any event whether it has any close bearing on the stock market or not. In this particular case it was raising of the rediscount rate of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston from 3 1/2% to 4%--a step occasioned by purely local conditions. Speculators in stocks, dealing in a market which had grown top-heavy of its own accord, evidently feared a similar rise in the rate of the New York Reserve Bank and threw overboard their motor shares in haste.