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supply to demand in any one country. It 
will be seen that they are all factors which 
exercise an influence that equably affects all 
the stocks of any one country, yet which must, 
of necessity, differ in different countries. The 
resultant force of these various factors we 
have called the “ Market Influence,” of which 
the dominant factor is the course of trade of 
the country in which the chief market for the 
stock is situated. 
So strong is this influence upon the 
realisable value of stocks that it is capable 
of entirely nullifying the effect which the 
individual improvement in a security would 
otherwise have had upon its current market 
price. 
This fact is very strongly brought out in 
the case of the Taff Vale Railway Ordinary 
stock. In 1898 the average price of this 
stock was 79 and the dividend it paid was 
l£ per cent. ; in the year 1901 the dividend 
had been increased to 3£ per cent., but the 
stock had fallen to 71 ; again, by 1904, 
the dividend had further improved to 
3$ per cent., yet in this year the price of 
the stock touched 68. Briefly, as the Taff 
Yale Railway Ordinary dividend steadily 
increased, the price of the stock steadily 
diminished.