Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 January 1901 — COMMEPCIAL AND FINANCIAL [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

COMMEPCIAL AND FINANCIAL

New York: No great amount of activity in general business is ever expected at this season of the year. Immediately following the holiday rush there is usually a slight natural reaction and a quieting down of conditions which gives merchants and manufacturers' an opportunity to take stock and balance, their accounts. The present is, in fact, a “between sehsons” k j>eriod—-too late for much movement in winter goods and too early for the spring trade. In the stock market the week has been a highly sensational one, sharp bi'eaks and sharper recoveries following each other in quick succession. Prices for nearly everything on the list are now higher than ever before and in some cases doubtless they have gone far beyond intrinsic values. Chicago: With the coming of the new year was brought a considerable increase to the volume of speculative business on the Board of Trade, together with the equally agreeable accompaniment of higher prices? Perhaps the persistent buoyancy of the New York stock market brought about a more hopeful feeling with regard to the probabilities of some of the overflowing rush of speculative sentiment becoming diverted toward the grain markets, but such a feeling would perhaps never have been entertained had it not been for the existence of certain features in the condition of the Board of Trade markets that in themselves were sufficiently suggestive of a likely advance. Wheat, the price of which has so long been depressed by heavy receipts from what was by many supposed to be a small crop, had promise of relief from that anomaly.