What was going on when I was born?

The stock market went on its biggest trading spree ever, racing past the 100 million-share milestone for volume and setting a new record of 132.7 million shares. The former record was 92.9 million shares. Despite the heavy trading, the Dow Jones industrial average slipped 1.81 points, to 829.43, after having climbed 18 points by early afternoon. The slippage was attributed to profit taking following Tuesday's record advance. (Page A1.) The unparalleled volume of the past two days focused attention on huge institutional investors. (D19.) Stock prices rose sharply around the world. (D19.) The lower interest rates that set off the market's surge probably will touch off a decline in consumer lending rates and a recovery for American business, economists said. They cautioned, however, that benefits will spread to the consumer slowly, and only if the lower rates are sustained. Still, some look for home mortgages rates to fall as much as three points, to 14 percent, by the end of the year. (A1.)

Interest rates were mixed and showed little net change yesterday as the frenzied ''buy at any price'' activity that raised prices sharply earlier in the week was replaced by more sober investment strategies. In a special wire sent to salesmen at Bache Halsey Stuart Shields Inc., Richard Hoey, the firm's chief economist, warned, ''We must add a note of caution to the current buying panic in the bond market.'' He said short-term rates might not decline much further, though bond yields are still in a lengthy decline. However, he said, investors should be wary of heavy buying now that 30-year bond prices are 25 points above their lows of October 1981.

It was a five-minute conference call late on a Friday afternoon. The talk was crisp and amiable between executives of the ABC television network and the Young & Rubicam advertising agency. And when it was done, sources in the advertising industry report, Y.& R. had committed the Ford Motor Company to plunk down more than $8 million for 24 minutes of television advertising time on a forthcoming ABC miniseries, ''The Winds of War.'' Such brisk conjuring with time and money, a rite performed annually by the three major television networks, marks the advance sale of advertising time for the next program season.

An article in some copies of Sports Page yesterday about free agents in the National Hockey League incorrectly suggested the scope of a team's right of first refusal. That right applies in the cases of all free agents except those who receive offers of less than $85,000 a season from another team and those who are under 24 years of age or who have less than five years' experience as professionals.

''There was no evidence of drug abuse and no testimony of sexual misconduct.'' - Representative Bill Alexander, for commission investigating charges of misconduct involving Congressional pages. (A24:6.)

of state plates arriving. ''It's the biggest event of the year,'' said Polly Frankenburg, who watched the steady traffic through her window at Frankenburg Insurance and Real Estate. ''It's the influx of the stove people.'' The stove people, from neighboring counties and from as far away as California and Europe, had come to the Vermont Castings Owners Outing, a gathering on a green hillock just outside of this village in central Vermont. The 10,000 visitors last weekend asked questions, swapped stories and shared their warm feelings for wood-burning stoves.

The euphoria that has overtaken Wall Street this week will likely mark the starting point for a decline in consumer interest rates and an eventual recovery of American business, a variety of economists predict. To be sure, economists caution, the drop in interest rates that inspired the stock market surge will be slow to spread to the consumer sector of the economy, and even this assumes that the money markets continue their downward slide. Moreover, the recession has left consumers and businesses badly bruised, so it will be some time before their finances are in order and both are ready to spend freely. The optimism on interest rates flows from an economic outlook that means continuing pain for many Americans. That outlook is for an exceptionally weak recovery in coming months, which in turn means continued unemployment and sluggish capital spending.

The group of 23 West German banks and the Swiss bank that are the principal creditors of AEG-Telefunken agreed today to grant the electronics company additional loans totaling the equivalent of $445.3 million. That is about half the amount the company and its court receiver have said is needed to keep the company afloat and restructure itself pending action to settle AEG's debt. The other half of the West German package is expected to be put together soon.

The Acting Bergen County Prosecutor plans to seek adult criminal trials for three of the five teen-agers accused of causing a commuter train derailment in Fair Lawn last month that killed the engineer and caused $6 million in damage. The Prosecutor, Richard T. Carley, said he would begin a court fight to remove the cases of the three youths, all of them 16 years old, from the juvenile justice system. Because the youths are now being treated as juveniles, their identities have not been made known. Mr. Carley said he would seek to try them as adults for aggravated manslaughter because of the ''willfulness'' of the acts that led to the death of the engineer, John E. Duffy, and the ''need for public deterrence.''

Just after noon yesterday, Fred Christ, a high school teacher from Union, N.J., and at first glance a seemingly straightforward, plainspeaking and sensible man, stepped up to the Lotto booth on the second floor of the Port Authority Bus Terminal to buy his weekly ticket. Like millions of other people who play the game, he knew his fate turned on chance, on Ping-Pong balls dropping randomly from a rotating drum. But like so many others, Mr. Christ has his own ideas about luck and what should and should not be left to it. ''I was reading the book of Revelations in the Bible the other day and I played the first six numbers I read,'' he said. ''You can't get a higher authority than that.''

The Occidental Petroleum Corporation announced yesterday, after talks with the Cities Service Company collapsed, that it would go directly to Cities Service stockholders with an offer to buy the big Oklahoma-based oil producer. The widely expected offer, which is similar to one rejected by company officials last Monday night, will be made today. It provides for Occidental to pay shareholders $50 a share for 38.2 million shares, or 49 percent of Cities Service stock.

Fueled by higher Social Security payments, personal income in the United States increased by 1 percent last month, the largest gain in nearly a year, the Government reported today. At the same time, the second phase of the Reagan Administration's tax cut program took effect and helped to raise after-tax income by 2.1 percent, matching the increase of July 1980, the Commerce Department reported. Guy Fiske, Deputy Commerce Secretary, called the report ''welcome news.'' He said it suggested that ''consumers are well positioned to lead the economy out of recession in the coming months.''