Days when the market trades 100 million shares (and that kind of volume, when over-the-counter trading is included, is today abnormally low) are a curse for owners, not a blessing—for they mean that owners are paying twice as much to change chairs as they are on a 50-million-share day. If 100 million-share days persist for a year and the average cost on each purchase and sale is 15 cents a share, the chair-changing tax for investors in aggregate would total about $7.5 billion—an amount roughly equal to the combined 1982 profits of Exxon, General Motors, Mobil and Texaco, the four largest
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