October 7, 1982

Stan Janda of nearby Manassas, Va., walked into the Sears, Roebuck & Company store at the Fair Oaks Mall the other day to return an item. Soon, however, he found himself browsing through racks of literature at the store's financial service center, where employees were selling insurance, stocks and bonds, and homes. But on that day, all Mr. Janda did was browse. Such is the challenge faced by Sears: Can the world's largest retailer interest its traditional shopper in the financial services on which it has staked so much?

Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules discovered in the Philadelphia apartment of a student whose death six five months ago was ruled a suicide have been found to contain cyanide, the police in Philadelphia said yesterday. But they emphasized that there were no indications of a link to the seven deaths in the Chicago area traced to cyanide-tainted Tylenol. In Chicago, Attorney General Tyrone Fahner of Illinois, who is leading the investigation into the Chicago deaths, also urged caution over reports that the Philadelphia police had reopened the suicide case. Tylenol Found in a Shoe When the Phildelphia student died April 3, his body was found to contain cyanide, but a test then of the Tylenol capsules found in a shoe in a closet showed no indication of the poison, according to Chief Inspector Frank Scafidi of the Philadelphia police homicide squad. The deaths in Chicago, however, led the police to re-examine the capsules this week, and this time they were found to contain cyanide, the chief said at a news conference last night.

Expectations that interest rates will continue to drop, as they have recently, set off a stock market rally yesterday that drove up the Dow Jones industrial average by 37.07 points, its second-biggest rise in history. The surge left the Dow average at 944.26, its highest level in 14 months. The jump was the latest of a half-dozen or so dramatic surges since mid-August, when interest rates first started to decline after more than a year at unusually high levels. The Dow average has risen 157 points since Aug. 12.

Spain's general election campaign opened officially today with a new note of uncertainty in the air. Until last weekend, polls and politicians had agreed that the Socialist Party, led by 40-year-old Felipe Gonzalez, the country's most popular politician, would finish first in the voting on Oct. 28. The only question seemed to be whether Mr. Gonzalez would win a majority of the 350 seats in the Congress, the legislative house of Parliament, or be forced to form a coalition. Indeed, the latest poll, published today in the Madrid daily El Pais but completed last week, gave the Socialists 34 percent of the vote as agaanst only 9.8 percent for the second strongest force, the right-wing Popular Alliance headed by Manuel Fraga, a former minister under Francisco Franco.

Touched off by a sharp drop in key interest rates, the credit markets staged a broad rally yesterday, with some Government securities prices climbing a point. ''Things were pretty dull Tuesday,'' a Government securities dealer said, ''but we saw a strong market and good trading today.'' Illustrating the move to higher prices and declining yields was the action of the Treasury's benchmark 14 percent bond due in 2011. It climbed a point, or $10 for each $1,000 of face value, to 119 4/32, thus yielding 11.62 percent. Yesterday's price edged within a half-point of the bond's peak level, set last week.