Speculators' Week

The Toronto Stock Exchange, often the scene of frenzied trading, had never seen anything like it. In a single day last week, 14.8 million shares changed hands for the heaviest trading day in the exchange's history. On the floor, traders surged around trading posts, rushed madly from booth to booth waving order slips and shouting at the top of their lungs. The heavy trading was touched off by reports of a rich drill hole in a copper vein discovered more than a fortnight ago in the Mattagami area of Quebec by New Hosco Mines Ltd., a smalltime mining outfit. Shares of New Hosco, a longtime penny stock that sold for 17-c- three weeks ago, soared as high as $7.25--and took other stocks with it. At week's end. as assayers reported that a second drilling in the Mattagami area was good but not spectacular, New Hosco stock dropped to $4.50.

One factor that helped trigger the rise is the upturn in the Canadian economy, heralded several weeks ago by a dramatic drop in unemployment. Canadians were showing new optimism, which always engenders speculation, and the boom was concentrated in speculative stocks that had gone ignored for months. Said a Toronto exchange member: "I don't think this would have happened four months ago, no matter what the drilling reports were. There was too much recession mood around then. But the thinking has been changing. It's a sign people are starting to think big again." Canadians gleefully termed the excitement on the exchange "Mattagami week."

Gold stocks, which have shown recent strength on news that the government proposes to increase subsidies to high-cost producers by 25%, were left behind in the speculative rush, closed the week off slightly; Western oils and base metals shared the same fate. But industrials continued a slow climb on good business news from Canadian industry, rose 1 1/2 points for the week.

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