Money Supply Climbs $5.7 Billion

The nation’s basic money supply jumped $5.7 billion in the week ended March 10, the Federal Reserve Board reported Thursday.

Even though the increase was more than expected, analysts said the figure did not have any significant effect on securities markets.

The Fed said M1 rose to a seasonally adjusted $637.6 billion from a revised $631.9 billion in the previous week. M1 includes cash in circulation, deposits in checking accounts and non-bank travelers checks.

For the latest 13 weeks, M1 averaged $629.4 billion, an 8.4% seasonally adjusted annual rate of gain from the previous 13 weeks.

The Fed, in its attempt to provide enough money to stimulate non-inflationary economic growth, has said it would like to see M1 grow in a range of 3% to 8% from the fourth quarter of 1985 through the final quarter of 1986.

Ray Stone, manager of financial economics with Merrill Lynch, said that while the week’s M1 growth was “bigger than most people were looking for, there didn’t seem to be any particular story behind the gain.”

In other reports:

- The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that commercial and industrial loans at major New York City banks fell $649 million, compared to a gain of $577 million a week earlier.

- The Federal Reserve said bank borrowings from the Federal Reserve System averaged $229 million in the two-week maintenance period ended March 12, down from $594 million in the previous two-week period.

- The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reported that the monetary base--the seasonally adjusted total of member bank reserves held at Federal Reserve banks and cash in bank vaults and in circulation--was $238.8 billion in the week ended Wednesday, up from $238.4 billion a week earlier.

- The Fed said total adjusted reserves of member banks averaged $45.931 billion, up from $45.867 billion in the prior two-week period.

- The Fed said net borrowed reserves averaged $232 million in the week ended Wednesday, down from $275 million a week earlier.